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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE VALUE & DIGNITY 
OF HUMAN LIFE 



THE 

VALUE & DIGNITY 
OF HUMAN LIFE 

AS SHOWN IN THE STRIVING AND 
SUFFERING OF THE INDIVIDUAL 

BY 

CHARLES GRAY SHAW 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
BOSTON 



COPYRIGHT 1911 BY RICHARD G. BADGER 



All Rights Reserved 



THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A. 



©CLA2837.01 



TO 

RUDOLF EUCKEN 

As a humble tribute to a great thinker and sincere appre- 
ciation of a faithful friend this volume is 
inscribed 



PREFACE 



This book has been written with the conviction that a 
radical change is taking place in our conception of human 
ideals and activities. Traditional theories and conventional 
morals seem to give a most inadequate view of man's inner 
life, while they are equally inefficient in accounting for his 
strivings in the world. For this reason, it becomes necessary 
to assume a new view of humanity, to ask, as if for the 
first time, what is man for? Such a question is taken up in 
the following work, which seeks to determine the apparent 
goal of human activity, and does not assume, with hedonist 
or intuitionist, that life in its totality may be expressed at 
once in terms of desire or duty. Was man meant for happi- 
ness? That question is rather artless, is it not? Then, was 
man meant for virtue? Yes, but what is virtue, and who is 
man? With the problem of life as such in mind, this book 
aims to elaborate a system of major morality, based upon the 
totality of our human striving. In the pursuit of such a 
problem, major ethics deems it proper to isolate the ego in his 
individuality, and to examine his strivings after selfhood. Is 
it too much to hope that this view of ethics, this estimate of 
the moral life, may be of aid to one who is anxious to com- 
prehend the meaning of humanity, in order that he may 
find his own place in the vast world? At any rate, this is 
the purpose of major morality. 

On the academic side, it must be stated that the material 
contained in the following pages has already served a prac- 
tical purpose among students of philosophy in New York 



6 PREFACE 

University, where the lectures on ethics have followed the 
plan laid down in the table of contents. In publishing this 
work, I am happy in having the privilege of dedicating it to 
my former teacher, Professor Rudolf Eucken, whose phil- 
osophy is becoming such a factor in American thought to-day. 
At the same time, I regret that, in pondering upon these 
ethical problems, I have had before me no work on ethics 
from the pen of this master, and I can only express the hope 
that the near future may witness the publication of his theory 
of conduct. To my colleague, Professor Robert MacDougall, 
I am indebted for assistance in correcting the proofs, and I 
take this opportunity to praise him for his patience and to 
thank him for his aid. My wife assumed the more trying 
task of reading the manuscript and helped me make it pre- 
sentable. 

C. G. S. 

University Heights. 



CONTENTS 



PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE 

Page 

I THE STRIVING OF HUMANITY WITH NATURE 19 

1. The ambiguous position of humanity. The 19 
development of a goal. The deduction of moral 
life. 

2. The striving of humanity with nature. 24 
a — Speculative striving. Separation of thought 24 
from the world. Affirmation of an inner realm. 

b — The aesthetic impulse of humanity. Affirm- 27 

ation of human freedom. Conflict of art with 

nature. 

c — The religious affirmation of the soul. Asser- 30 

tion of the self. Negation of the world. 

d — The ethical activity of humanity. The 32 

struggle for humanity. Ethics as philosophy of 

life. 

II THE CONTINUITY OF HUMAN STRIVING 36 

1. The category of development. The historical 36 
in ethics. 

2. The ethical moment in history. Ceaseless 37 
striving after humanity. 

3. The historical view of ethics. The internal 40 
in history. The temporal element in progress. 

4. The stages of human history. Naturistic, 43 
characteristic, humanistic periods. The three 
Gunas of Sankhyan philosophy. Plato's tri- 
partite Republic. Valentinus' triple order of 
men. The historical schemes of Vico and 
Schiller. 

5. Phases of the moral life. Hedonism, rigorism, 48 
humanism. Ethics of the third order. 

Ill THE WORLD OF HUMANITY 52 

I. Human striving and historical progress. Hu- 52 
manity the goal of man's efforts. The positing 
of a human world-over. 



8 CONTENTS 

Page 

2. The world of humanity in theory. 55 
a — The world of thought. Aryan intellect- 56 
ualism. 

b — The ethical world-order. Semitic pragma- 58 
tism. 

3. Positive view of the world of humanity. 60 
a — The world of culture. World-significance 60 
of beauty. Art and the world-life. 

b — The world of worship. The spontaneity of 62 
religion. Life in the religious world-order. 

4. The world-life in human consciousness. Direct 65 
evidence of the world-life. 

a — Humanity and the individual. The person- 66 
al problem. The nature of selfhood. Human 
search for the soul. 

b — The world of persons in human conscious- 70 
ness. Essential relation of self to self. Phil- 
osophical and poetical views. Subtle bond 
between persons. 

PART TWO: THE NATURISTIC VIEW OF LIFE 

I THE LIFE OF HUMANITY IN SENSE 79 

1. The first stage of mankind. The idea of 79 
progress. 

2. The origin of moral life. The striving of 81 
man. The progress from nature to spirit. 

3. The possibility of moral progress. Evidence 84 
of ethical development. Interest, virtue, value. 

4. The entrance of idealism. Experience and 87 
the ideal. Spirit in the midst of sense. The 
necessity of naturism. 

II THE FEELING OF HUMANITY IN PLEASURE AND 

DESIRE 92 

1. Life according to pleasure-pain. Life as en- 92 
joyment. Quality and quantity of feeling. 

2. The hedonic calculus. The perceptual anal- 96 
ogy. Difficulty with attention and memory. 

3. The hedonic law. Change from enjoyment 99 
to benefit. 



CONTENTS 9 

Page 

4. Life according to desire. Desire more 102 
elemental than pleasure. Life activistic, not 
hedonic. Desire and pleasure. 

5. Desire and human striving. Self-realization 104 
more than pleasure. The craving for power. 
Naturism more than hedonism. 

Ill THE NATURISTIC VIEW OF THE SELF AND HU- 
MANITY 108 

1. Human Selfhood. 1 08 
a — Selfhood in sense. Selfhood as self-love. The no 
self and individuation. Weakness of selfhood 

in sense. 

b — The will to selfhood. The solitaire and the 114 

superman. Self-love and self-will. 

2. Human worldhood. 1 18 
a — The utilitarian adjustment. The greatest 118 
happiness. Universal benevolence. 

b— The social organization of conduct. The 121 

social organism. Conciliation of egoism and 

altruism. 

c — Egoism and Socialism. Altruist and sym- 124 

pathist. 

IV THE TRANSMUTATION OF NATURISM AND MORAL- 
ISM 129 

1. The problem of moralism. Morality as per- 129 
fected virtue. Morality as heteronomy. 

2. The conflict over virtue. Antipathy to the 132 
moralistic view. Absorption of virtue in 
utility. 

3. Heteronomy and humanity. Relation of the 135 
moral to the human. 

4. The relativity of the good. The case of speci- 136 
fie virtues. The symbolic nature of benevolence. 

V NATURISM AS EUDAEMONISM I4I 

1. The form of happiness as immediacy. Animal- 141 
ity and humanity. Hellenic happiness. Classic 
contemplation. 

2. Happiness as possession of the good. Posses- 145 
sion versus pursuit. The secondary ideal of 
activity. 



io CONTENTS 

Page 

3. The "work of contemplation." Aristole's 148 
ideal. Bacon's argument. 

4. The content of happiness in activity. The 152 
value of knowledge. Skeptical attitude of the 
modern. Labor as anodyne. "Cultivating the 
garden." Will and intellect. 

5. Naturistic optimism. Literary utilitarianism. 156 
Life and labor. 

VI — RESULT OF NATURISM THE VALUE OF LIFE. ... l6o 

1. The range of naturism. Passive and active 160 
forms of the doctrine. 

2. The worth of life. The claim of life upon 162 
humanity. 

3. The striving of humanity beyond nature. 165 
Organization of life in civilization. The affirm- 
ation of humanity in culture. The trans-natural 
vocation of man. 

4. The inness of human feeling. Judgments of 168 
feeling. 

5. The entrance of pessimism. Hedonism's 169 
optimistic weakness. Inability of nature to 
satisfy human striving. 

6. The meaning of human feeling. The inner 172 
life. Problem of human sensitivity. Man's am- 
biguous position in the worldwhole. 

7. The sense of human striving. Persistence of 175 
desire and human positing. The mystery of 
activity. Man both creature and character. 

PART THREE: CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS 

I THE LIFE OF HUMANITY IN WILL l8l 

1. Forms of the doctrine. Intuitionism and 181 
rigorism. 

2. The place of characteristic ethics. Relation to 182 
second period of human history. Academic 
value of rationalism. 

3. The transition from nature to character. 186 
Variations of virtue limited. Similar transition 



CONTENTS ii 

Page 

from sensation \o idea. Unity of humanity 
amidst changes. Dual form of characteristic 
ethics. 
4. Characteristic ethics as intuitionism. Develop- 189 
ment of the intuition. 

II CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS AND CONSCIENCE 191 

1. The moral sense and pleasure. Terminology 7 191 
of conscience. Psychology of conscience as a 
sense. 

2. The humanity of conscience. Value of origins. 195 
The evolutionary view. Relation of conscience 

to social environment. 

3. The outer conflict of the ego with humanity. 199 
Dramatic possibilities of the sentiment. Good 
and bad conscience. 

4. The inner conflict between sentiment and 203 
passion. Durability of human sentiment. 

5. Resentment and remorse. How humanity in 204 
man triumphs. Intellectual limits of conscience. 

6. Conscience and non-resentment. The anticipa- 206 
tion of remorse. 

7. The possibility of malevolence. Humanistic 209 
ground of non-resentment. 

Ill CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS AND RECTITUDE 212 

1. Moral life in reason. Transition from senti- 212 
ment to judgment. The norm of rectitude. 

2. Rectitude as autonomy. Antipathy to inclina- 215 
tion and consequence. How ethical judgments 

are possible. 

3. The problem of ethical judgment. Judgment 218 
and identity. Qualification of copula and pre- 
dicate. 

4. Real rectitude and human interest. Possibility 220 
of disinterestedness. 

5. Humanity as the ideal. Real rectitude and 222 
universal interest. Transition from rectitude to 
duty. 

IV HUMAN STRIVING AS FREEDOM 227 

I. The place of freedom in the world. Freedom 227 
and law. 



12 CONTENTS 

Page 

2. The punctual view of freedom. Arguments 228 
from consciousness and compunction. The 
totality of human freedom. 

3. Evidences of creative freedom. Testimony of 232 
art and science. Results from religion and 
morality. 

4. The unity of freedom and fate. Man and the 235 
"free moral agent." How man transcends free- 
will. 

V THE ETHICAL DEMANDS OF HUMANITY 239 

1. The demand as individual duty. Duty as 240 
moral law. Metaphysical nature of duty. 

2. The self-contradiction of individual will. The 243 
question concerning the quality of conation. 
Effect upon morality. 

3. Obligation as human responsibility. The inner 246 
nature of duty. Duty and human destiny. Hu- 
man responsibility. 

VI THE LIFE OF RIGORISM 25 1 

1. The ideal of renunciation. Its religious signi- 251 
ficance. Rigorism and eudaemonism. 

2. Life as sinful. World-despair. Nihilistic 253 
ideals. Moralism and pessimism. 

3. The idealization of pain. Renunciatory ideal 258 
in modern poetry. Attack upon the depress- 
ing ideal. Criticism of doubt and repentance. 

4. The passion for morality. Effect upon the 262 
aesthetical. 

5. The hatred of life. Belief in pain. Conscious- 265 
ness of death. Antipathy to culture. 

VII THE EFFECT OF CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS THE 

DIGNITY OF MAN 270 

1. Intuitionism and life. Artificial view of con- 271 
science and rectitude. Weakness of freedom and 
duty. No ground for renunciation. 

2. Special problems of characteristic Ethics. 275 
a — Conscience as conflict with humanity. In- 276 
dividual compunction. 

b — The fallacy of rectitude and its humanistic 277 
correction. The content of rectitude. 



CONTENTS 13 

Page 
c — The world* of freedom and free-will. Free- 278 
dom within humanity. 

d — Imperative duty as human striving. Com- 279 
mon ground of duty and desire. 
3. Escape from rigorism through human dignity. 281 
General view of life in rigorism. Intellectual 
dignity of man. Dignity a substitute for duty. 

PART FOUR: HUMANISTIC ETHICS 

I MAJOR AND MINOR MORALITY 287 

1. The Life of Humanity in Spirit 287 

2. Humanity as a system. Total view of the life- 289 
problem. Non-ethical views of life. The fail- 
ure to find humanity. Life not beyond dispute. 

3. The minor nature of hedonism and intuition- 293 
ism. Lost sense of inner unity. Eccentric ethics. 
Adherence to naturism. Pettiness of minor 
morality. Table of major and minor morals. 

4. The pragmatic repudation of reason. Deca- 300 
dent morality. Contempt for the intellect. An- 
aesthetic effect of activism. 

5. The morality of maxims. Maxims and activ- 303 
ity. Ideals of the intellect. Distrust of art. 

6. The categories of major morality. Place of 306 
value and dignity. Contrast with good-virtue, 
rectitude-duty. 

II THE CATEGORY OF VALUE 309 

1. The actuality of value. Value and the good. 309 
Lack of activism. Value and modern ideals. 
Want of moral goal. 

2. The conceptual nature of value — value and 312 
progress. Reconciliation of idealism and activism. 
Romantic nature of modern ethics. Place of 
value in human striving. How value is found. 
Value and progress. 

3. Value as an intuition. Reconciliation of sense 317 
and reason. Intuitive nature of humanity. Com- 
parison with aesthetics. 

4. The source of the value- judgment. Value in- 319 
ternal. Value and feeling. 



i 4 CONTENTS 

Page 

5. Value, pleasure and desire. Advantage of 321 
pleasure as a determinant. Limitation of pleas- 
ure. Value and desire. Limitation of empiri- 
cal desire. Value and desirability. The ideali- 
zation of desire. 

Ill VALUE AS AN ETHICAL SANCTION 327 

I. The ground of moral judgment. Virtue not 327 

without worth. The ground and goal of moral 

endeavor. 
I. The sense of moral action. The category of 329 

absolute value. Moral values established through 

humanity. 

3. Value as basis of moral belief. Treatment of 332 
moral skepticism. Value and moral decadence. 
Relation of value to right and wrong. 

4. The world of values. Ontological nature of 335 
value. The permanent values of humanity. 
Eternal justice and eternal values. 

5. The world of values as moral goal. Ground 338 
of human existence and action. The transval- 
uation of values. 

IV HUMAN DIGNITY AS ETHICAL CATEGORY 34I 

1. The dignity of the inner life. Man as a 341 
world. His world-life. 

2. The dignity of action. Action and inaction. 343 
Yogi worklessness. The will's limitations. 

3. Activity as creative. The creative phase of 346 
human striving. The totality of action. Deed- 
act and Vollthat. 

4. Completeness of action in self-consciousness. 349 
Action as intelligent. World-work. Work as 
introactivity. 

5. The intellectual dignity of humanity. Intel- 352 
lect and supreme humanity. Contrast between 
thinking and acting. The pragmatic view of 
life. Action inferior to thought. Unity of will 
and intellect in consciousness. Intellectual na- 
ture of human striving. 

6. Culture and conduct. Culture and human 357 



CONTENTS 15 

Page 
work. Strivmg after self-knowledge. Limits 
of voluntarism. Pragmatism and the inner life. 

V THE DIGNITY OF SELFHOOD 361 

1. The striving for human selfhood. The ego and 362 
humanity. The right path to personality. In- 
sufficiency of egoism and altruism. 

2. Contemplative egoism. Selfhood and culture. 365 
Hedonic and humanistic egoism. 

3. The ego and his individuality. Recent attempts 368 
at egoism. Intellectual self-assertion. The 
striving after inner life. 

4. The sense of human worldhood. The intel- 374 
lectual view of humanity. Humanity and the 
world as a whole.. Humanity and history. 

5. Solidarity and pessimism. Self-sacrifice. Pessi- 377 
mism and compassion. 

VI THE TRIUMPH OF HUMANITY IN MAJOR MORAL- 
ITY 380 

1. Human triumph in consciousness — The value 381 
of life. Man as valuing organism. Happiness 
and reality. Reconciliation of optimism and 
pessimism. 

2. The triumph over immediacy. From pleasure 383 
to desire. Utility and eudaemonia. Human 
values remote. Fallacy of activism. 

3. Human triumph in conduct — The dignity of 386 
man. Conduct as reaction upon the world. 
Moral pessimism. The subordination of sense. 
The significance of conscience and rectitude. 
Dignity of human freedom and duty. Value of 

the renunciatory ideal. 

4. The triumph over renunciation. Attitude of 391 
man toward the world. Opposition to renun- 
ciation. Essential value of renunciation. 

5. The dignity of acquiescence. Unity of value 394 
and dignity. Sublime quality of renunciation. 
The life-impulse and death-instinct. The real 
human problem — to will self and the world. 
Unity of selfhood and worldhood. The reality 

of human triumph. 



PART ONE 
THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE 



THE VALUE & DIGNITY 
OF I^UMAN LIFE 



i 

THE STRIVING OF HUMANITY WITH 
NATURE 

The problem of our human life appears in the am- 
biguous position that man occupies in the world-whole; its 
solution comes about by the inner striving of humanity 
with outer nature. Humanity stands midway between na- 
ture and spirit, receiving from the lower order the will with 
which he lives, from the higher the ideal toward which he 
strives. Human striving whether in thought or action is 
provoked by this paradoxical position occupied by man who 
sees that he cannot remain in the world of sense, while he 
is not ready for life in the world of spirit. All knowledge 
must finally adjust itself to the claims of experience and 
understanding and all action conduct itself in view of na- 
tural desire and rational duty; for while man may belong 
to the realm of spirit, his speculative and practical problems 
must be solved in view of his origin in the natural order of 
sensation. As man strives to realize his inherent selfhood 
and worldhood, he must inquire continually concerning his 
place in the universe and the problem that his life presents. 
From all that humanity seems to feel and all that it has at- 
tempted in the past, it seems as though man were destined 
to posit his spiritual nature in speculative contrast and prac- 
tical opposition to the world that all but envelops him. 

I THE AMBIGUOUS POSITION OF HUMANITY 

In a certain sense there is nothing extraordinary in the 
problems of culture and conduct as these have disturbed 
the human spirit since the inception of conscious spiritual 
life among the Hindoos and Hebrews. All questions con- 
cerning the means of knowledge and the motives for action 
are conditioned by the ambiguity of our human attitude, and 

19 



20 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

where now the sensational and then the rational claims man, 
the problem arising is due to no other fact than the partici- 
pation of a natural creature in an order of life above him. 
In no other way than as a conflict between matter and mind, 
of the sensuous and the spiritual, could human life as such 
arise and develop. For the animal the world is all sense, 
so that his life contains nothing problematic; for the angel 
all is spirit, so that cherubim and seraphim are free from 
philosophic responsibility. But man's midway position as 
well as the mixture of sense and spirit in his consciousness 
make it needful for him to inquire concerning his place in 
the world-whole and to posit his inner life in contrast to his 
outer existence. Only as this self-affirmation is taken up by 
man can humanity appear in the universe. 

The self-positing of humanity is no mere academic 
affair, involving the cool elaboration of judgments, nor is it 
an instinctive matter which comes about naturally in the 
course of human life. It is a complete deed on the part 
of man involving ceaseless striving, just as it is accomplished, 
not immediately, but gradually in the historial progress of 
the human spirit. Individual effort and universal struggle 
on the part of nations seem thus to have no other meaning 
than the inner affirmation of a humanity which arises in the 
world of time and space. Humanity, viewed either indivi- 
dually or socially, is no primitive possession of mankind, but 
an achievement brought about by characteristic human acti- 
vity. Being both within and without the world of nature, 
humanity is called upon to originate something characterized 
by both the phenomenal and the real, the sensuous and the 
spiritual. Such is the problem of life as it appears in 
thought and action, as it is organized in the abstract doc- 
trines of logic and ethics, in the concrete disciplines of art 
and religion. Life Cannot be avoided, for while humanity 
may postpone some af its problems, it is impossible for man's 
spiritual nature to remain submerged in the various forms 
of faunal existence. 

In the light of man's position in the world of nature 
and spirit, the problem of human philosophy appears in firm 
outline. Philosophy aims to deduce the ground of the 
world, and the goal of human life; it is guided by an en- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 21 

during logical principle which here aims at discovering the 
validity of things, there is bent upon considering their value 
in the presence of an ethical ideal. Ethics may spring from 
logic, where human morality in aligning the ideal appeals 
to metaphysics to authorize its action; or logic may have an 
ethical motif in and behind it, as though man's quest of reali- 
ty were guided by an assumption that what ought to be is. 
In the beginning is the thought, or the deed; particular 
philosophies must present their respective claims for intellect 
or will. But the fact remains that man in the realm of 
nature and reason cannot accept off-hand the world of ex- 
perience, whether it consist of those outer phenomena which 
make up the natural order, or such inner ones as go to show 
the existence of a subjective and spiritual one. Humanity is 
not found either within or without, but must be posited 
by man in the negation of nature and the affirmation of 
spirit ; in this way the world of immediacy, whether physical 
or psychical, is set aside for the one world of humanity. 

For a thorough consideration of the ethical problems, 
wherein neither moral casuistry nor ethical culture shall ob- 
scure the august nature of the question, something ontologi- 
cal must be premised, postulated, and continually implied. 
Man is to be regarded, not in his individuality, but in his 
totality; not as a phenomenon, but as a person: not as an 
inhabitant of nature, but as a citizen in the civitas humanita- 
tis. Thus understood, human life will be real; hence the 
need of metaphysical methods by way of consideration. If 
the good is not a category, like substance, or value a category 
like causality, there exist judgments of good and judgments 
of value which participate in reason as securely as do those 
logical judgments of reality and relation. These moral re- 
lations and these ethical judgments may not adapt them- 
selves to reality in the form of noumena, but their being 
belongs to some transphenomenal order, and in the totality 
of all that exists there is a place for them in the world of 
humanity. Now to consider moral life in particular, we 
must survey human life in general. 

No consistent ethical theory can be carried out, un- 
less the manifest destiny of man serves as the background of 
the particular view which is held. For this reason, one 



22 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

cannot be a perfect hedonist unless he shows that humanity 
is hedonistic, too. If man's position in the world-whole is 
a naturistic one, and his end seems to consist in cultivating 
something of immediate moment, then it is probable that the 
course of feelings, which are so influential with men and ani- 
mals alike, was meant to occupy his attention altogether. 
Under naturistic auspices, the end of life may be called 
happiness. Yet suppose that man was not called unto a 
concrete life, and was never destined to realize his animality 
as the goal of his being? Rationalism, too, has its claims, 
and accordingly it surveys man sub specie boni, just as it 
postulates the belief that man was meant for reason and 
should submit to the domination of an abstract ideal. Both 
of these views have been entertained, and that with no little 
zeal on the part of their respective advocates. Yet it is rare 
than an ethical theory sets out upon the devious path of 
moral philosophy with a just conception of what man, its 
subject, was meant to do. For this reason, commandments 
to seek pleasure or to follow virtue are not necessarily 
sanctioned by the obvious plan of humanity. 

Ethical theories have made no mistake in the choice or 
treatment of certain leading functions in human nature; 
they have failed only in presenting these in their integrity, 
just as they have omitted to show how these motives for 
action bear upon the whole problem of life. At times we 
are hedonists, at times intuitionists, but we are ever human- 
ists in our action. We seek a form of realization and pur- 
sue a course of activity which shall be hedonic or rigoristic, 
as the circumstances may be, but within the sphere of these 
activities is found a central impulse by which man seeks to 
assert himself. Can the goal of life be other than the per- 
fection of the species, or the achievement of humanity? On 
the metaphysical side, it is vain to suppose that by activity 
man can become other than human: hence an ethical theory 
which advises animality or suggests that man should adapt 
himself to some angelic order is wanting in logical penetra- 
tion. If humanity is not an ethical category, like good-vir- 
tue, right-duty, it is an original positing of man without 
which no particular moral theory can be comprehended. 

Just as ethics must inquire concerning the total plan 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 23 

of life, so it must also raise the question whether man is in 
any wise realizing this. % Ethics never proposes a new pro- 
blem, not does it lay upon man any extra burden; so that 
when we see what humanity is and long has been doing, we 
shall see likewise, from our ethical point of view T , what man 
himself should do. Humanity has not waited for ethics to 
deduce principles of pure morality or to enjoin abstract 
commandments; its call to work was long since found in it- 
self and in positing its own being, humanity began to do in 
general what a philosophic science like ethics now attempts in 
particular. Morality need never urge man to "act," for the 
surplus of humanity within him will keep him in constant 
activity. When ethics takes up its task of classifying human 
ideals and fortifying human motives, it finds humanity, not 
in a dormant state as though waiting for some ethical im- 
petus, but ceaselessly engaged in achieving its peculiar des- 
tiny. For this reason, an ethical theory cannot make head- 
way unless it take cognizance of man's inherent operations 
within himself and upon an all-surrounding world of na- 
ture. 

Man is unwilling to "accept the universe" or to "take 
life for granted." By him the world of immediacy in both 
physical and psychical forms is disallowed. Human impulses 
to pass from the immediate to the ultimate assume both a 
logical and an ethical form; for the intellect as well as the 
will is interested in the plan which proposes to realize hu- 
manity, and this cannot be done without spiritual effort. 
Man posits his humanity when he thinks correctly as when 
he acts wisely: and whether intellect or will be superior 
when mutually compared, the fact remains that both cogni- 
tion and conation are forms of activity which spring from 
man who sends forth these impulses, not merely for the sake 
of knowing or doing, but for the sake of human realization. 
Pure cognition and pure moralization may be spoken of as 
subjects of thought, but in such abstract entities, living hu- 
manity does not participate. Speculation and practice out- 
do themselves in the service of man: one constructs an ideal 
order of thought, the other an ideal realm of values which 
spring from the human efforts after contemplation and con- 
quest. And where nature forms the starting-point and 



24 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

makes up the context of these two activities, their form and 
purpose appear in the world of humanity. 

2 THE STRIVING OF HUMANITY WITH NATURE 

The problem of life, however, consists in something 
more than the recognition of man's peculiar place in the uni- 
verse; it involves suitable reaction on his part, for nature 
not only affords a contrast of spirit, but presents an oppo- 
sition which must be overcome. Phenomena must be or- 
ganized according to the laws of the mind, while outer in- 
citements must be reduced to genuine motives. Man's po- 
sition immediately involves a problem engaging all the char- 
acteristic forms of spiritual activity; and the several forms 
of human philosophy seem to have no other purpose than the 
establishment of a spiritual order as the goal of human exist- 
ence. Thought and action do not arise of themselves or 
for their own sake; sentiments of taste and worship are de- 
veloped for something more than the satisfying of the aes- 
thetic and religious in man. All of these forms of culture, 
as they produced knowledge and virtue, beauty and faith, 
arise at the behest of a self-positing humanity. 

A — The Speculative Striving of Humanity 

Knowledge as such springs from the human under- 
standing, just as it is a function put forth by an ever-striving 
humanity. While it is vain for man to attempt a com- 
plete solution of life's problem, which will leave no mystery 
behind it, his human limitations do not forbid his asserting 
that knowledge is a part of his vocation, just as it is a 
phase of the general plan of the world. Even nature, 
which falls short of humanity, appears anxious to be com- 
prehended as well as obeyed, for the perfection of the hu- 
man brain seems to be a discernible object in the world of 
natural forms and natural forces. Human cognition is a 
thorough-going affair which, when sufficiently estimated, re- 
veals the proportions of a limitless spiritual life. To ac- 
quire interesting facts about the external world, and to learn 
thereby of its laws and relations, is no more the destiny of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 25 

reason that the perfection of an inward discipline which 
shall bespeak untold possibilities of mere knowledge. Far 
better is it to assume, in the light of what cognition has 
accomplished, that knowledge consists in such exercise of 
inner powers and the discovery of outer forms that the 
thinker finds his place in the total universe. Inner process- 
es and outer principles do not exist for themselves or for 
the sake of mere cognition ; they combine to assist man in the 
demonstration of his humanity in knowledge. Into nature 
we are put, not merely to labor or to enjoy, but to learn; 
without active intelligence man cannot be man. 

Now knowledge enables man to overcome nature, be- 
cause his thought supplies him with evidence of another 
world, the intelligible one. Knowledge is more than cog- 
nition; the criterion of certainty is more than outer clearness 
or inner synthetic consistency. This is because the general 
bearing of knowledge concerns man's work and man's pro- 
blem in the world of work. Knowledge is made up of ele- 
ments drawn from sense and deduced from the understand- 
ing, and the problem of knowledge is highly concerned with 
outer facts and inner necessities. In view of this dual phase 
of our human cognition, can we be blind to the fact that 
our whole being is situated in the midst of a confused na- 
ture — humanity, which gives to life its problem and pro- 
gram? These two realms, which while distinct in quality 
are yet capable of reconcilation, envelop man and to realize 
himself he must reduce them to rational forms of thought, 
with here the claims of sense, and there those of reason. 
The cognitive motive in the view de mundi sensibilis et in- 
telligibilis cannot remain hidden; it is humanity asserting it- 
self in an intellectual way, as if man were saying, give me 
understanding and I shall live. Knowledge convinces man 
that his immediate environment is not final, and constructs 
for him a trans-natural world of concepts, the counterpart 
of the first world of percepts. By knowledge man is ex- 
alted, and the cognitive process emancipates him from na- 
ture which it reproduces in mental fashion ; meanwhile posi- 
tive and negative forms of judgment afford a sure means 
of asserting spirit and negating nature in the world of hu- 
manity. Where this process is carried to the extremes of 



26 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

sophistry and skepticism and it is pointed out that know- 
ledge is impossible, since the inner thought does not cor- 
respond to the outer thing, the independence of intellection 
is none the less apparent, for man seems possessed of a life 
of reason which suffers nothing by being separated from the 
world of reality. It is in such an intellectual mood that 
philosophy calls man the measure of all things in their being 
or not-being. 

The humanistic element in cognition further appears in 
those distinctions which, as suggested by the conflict between 
being and thinking, tend to relegate man to himself in the 
one world of knowledge. Man's intellectual conflict with 
nature is carried on by means of an abiding contrast between 
understanding and experience, wherein all the spontaneity 
of human cognition is pitted against the given order of ex 
perience. Human knowledge has ever felt the competition 
between inner and outer, in the dualism between the world 
of ideas and the world of things, as in the modern diremp- 
tion of thought and sensation. At heart, this problem is 
only a phase of the total human question which asks how 
and in how far is man to be related to nature; and the 
human endeavor to know is only an element in the com- 
plete plan by means of which humanity seeks to extricate 
itself from the world, in order that it may pursue an inde- 
pendent mode of being. The metaphysical side of this 
distinction appears in the separation of mind and body, each 
with its peculiar attributes or qualities, which make impossi- 
ble the identification of the mental and corporeal. Human- 
ity profits by this ontological separation of man from the 
corporeal world in which his body participates, and the 
life of spirit is furthered by the consciousness of an in- 
dependent mind which carries on its own process of thought. 
From this point of view, mentality is the very life of man. 

While the logical form of human activity may seem 
to have no special bearing upon the ethical life of man, how- 
ever much it may minister to his being in general, it is 
worth while noting how seriousness of ethical consideration 
has usually been accompanied by profundity of logical analy- 
sis. In this way, the course of human thinking associates 
itself with the conduct of life. Socrates cannot quite perfect 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 27 

his ethical maxim without a logical preliminary which, 
according to the testimony of Aristotle (Meta. 1. 6; xn. 
4), gave philosophy the concept, in the form of a universal 
definition in morals. The moral origin of Augustine ceases 
not until it has penetrated to the depths of the soul in 
search of inner experience and will. With Kant the human 
connection between thinking and doing reveals itself in the 
form of a two-fold critique which implies that the category 
of causal connection is not distinction from the categorical 
imperative of freedom. Kant thus arrives at ethics by a 
logical tour de force, and hesitates to assume the moral pro- 
blem until he has found some sufficient task for the endless 
striving of the human will. Now the moral burden is by 
no means a light one ; it is both logical and ethical, since the 
whole weight of reality rests upon the practical reason. 
Speculation shows how insufficient is the understanding to 
penetrate the veil of phenomena, and it is only by means of 
a translogical method that man comes abreast of the real 
order. Perverse as this method may be, Kant, with these 
representatives of ancient and mediaeval life, does not fail 
to show how the question of the deed concerns that of the 
thought. Over both will and intellect is the overarching 
humanity which, while not independent of them, is superior 
to them. Thought may sometimes depend upon experience, 
sometimes upon understanding, but always upon man him- 
self, the thinking person; humanity is greater than thought. 

B — The Aesthetic Impulse of Humanity 

Upon the artistic side of his nature, man reveals the 
same striving for humanity, only here its ardent, humanic 
qualities show more convincingly how man himself has en- 
tered into the problem of his own being, which is not left to 
the abstractions of either logical law or ethical precept. 
Man's world must be in keeping with his character, hence 
he cannot remain upon the plane of nature, absorbed in sen- 
suous intuition, and occupied with objects of immediate 
moment. He must be human, and the call to humanity is 
one which is caught up by aesthetics as well as by logic of 
the human understanding. In that play of spirit which art 



28 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ever indulges in, there is manifest the motive to excel na- 
ture and perfect her forms. As the scientific significance 
of phenomena begins to appear when the facts of nature are 
reduced to law, so their artistic import is disclosed when 
the creative spirit of humanity reduces them to order, 
wherein tones are put into a scale and colors into a scheme 
of harmony. Nature is seen in the landscape, while hu- 
manity appears symbolically in the human form. Mean- 
while the treatment of nature is now more, now less, intre- 
pid than in the case of cognition, where sensible effects in 
nature are reduced to convenient mental abstractions, service- 
able for thought yet never free from snare. In all art a 
metaphysical murmur may be heard. Art begins with the 
sensuous forms of the natural order and, to whatever abyss 
of human contemplation these may be sunk when observed 
by a form-genius like Angelo or a tone-genius like 
Beethoven, they return to the world of experience in appro- 
priate perceptible forms; for where science is abstract art 
is intuitive and perceptible. 

In the midst of aesthetic intuition, which plays so ef- 
fectively with the forms of nature, the dominant human 
quality of art must suffer no concealment. Man it is who, 
dissatisfied with mere nature, however glorious the infinite 
order of sensible forms may be, retreats to the very depths 
of his humanity only to return with visions of a new heaven 
and a new earth. Like logic, with its categories, art exists 
for the sake of man whose child she is, whose image she 
bears; she arises from no imitation of nature, but springs 
spontaneously from a self-emancipating humanity. It is the 
inner essence and non-utilitarian character of art which re- 
veal anew the human source of beauty; nature herself is 
innocent of this impulse on the part of man to assert himself 
as human, and she lends her properties of time and color, 
of form and light, without knowing how man will transform 
them into an art which is truly human. So far as aesthetics 
is concerned, the fate of humanity consists in surmounting 
nature in the interest of a unified spiritual life. 

Like the source of art, the world-order of beauty is 
to be found in humanity. The usual order of perception 
and action, which are made necessary by man's participation 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 29 

in the world of nature, does not forbid forms of extranatural 
thought and deed whfch are constantly revealed in artistic 
creation. As a result, two possible realms are disclosed to 
human existence: the world of nature and the order of 
culture. Man needs somewhat more than a habitat which 
cannot contain or affect his spiritual nature; he must have 
more than environment, and thus he creates the world of 
culture as his sovereign domain of spiritual life. Hence 
it becomes more than merely suggestive that man, while in 
nature, is destined to strive for humanity as the obvious 
goal of his activity. This does not make it impossible to 
raise the questions, whether man was meant for culture and 
whether he is justified in pursuing a remote object in a 
natural life like his which is so replete with objects of im- 
mediate moment ; but the fact remains that man has attempt- 
ed the life of culture, and counsels to return to nature and 
maxims which magnify immediacy cannot ignore the fact 
that man is bent upon an independent and internal humanity. 
The subtle conflict of art with nature is more likely 
to convince one of the ceaseless striving of humanity to 
exist, when it is noted how naturistic is the form of that 
art which seeks the redemption of man. Art does not 
imitate nature, but repeats her lesson in a more appropriate 
fashion; art does not exist that it may exert a moral in- 
fluence, because ethics should take care of itself; it exists 
for the sake of humanity. Thus we may depart from the 
metaphysico-moral view of antique criticism, which knew 
only the norms of imitation and utility, and as moderns, see 
how our humanity, which needs no outer percepts or inner 
utilities, puts forth art as a means of self-realization and 
proof of human superiority. Perhaps man, in his philoso- 
phy, his art, his religion, is self-illusioned, and in his mental 
blindness persists in self-stupefaction through culture, but 
the obvious plan of history leads man away from nature 
toward a self-existent humanity, and the data which serve 
for an ethical theory of man are drawn necessarily from a 
transphenomenal realm of being wherein knowledge takes 
the place of impression and art plays the part of nature. 



30 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

C — The Religious Affirmation of the Soul. 

Further insight into the life-problem, which so stands 
in need of systematization, is afforded by the striving con- 
sciousness of man within the precinct of religion. Here, 
the departure from nature is more abrupt while the approach 
to humanity is more intimate than in the case of either 
logic or aesthetics. Knowledge gives laws to natural pheno- 
mena and is content to reveal its supremacy in an implied 
and passive manner; for knowledge has nothing creative 
about it. This element appears in art, which is not satisfied 
with purely critical efforts, but seeks to produce something 
new. Yet in all its work, aesthetics does not bring out 
that seriousness which ever accompanies the determined 
efforts that man makes toward self-emancipation. Of all 
these moods, religion is the most affirmative and seems to 
stand out in sublime isolation among the attempts at human 
self-expression. Where man manifests a definite concern for 
the one problem of his being, and longs to witness the 
transmutation of immediate nature into ultimate humanity, 
he will find in religion an ally without superior in the world 
of culture. 

The method which religion employs renders it a fit 
interpreter of humanity as well as a faithful agent of its 
destiny; it is the polemical one in which all the forces of 
spirit are evoked for the sake of emancipating man. Re- 
ligion can hardly help negating the world and man's life in 
nature. The Tao reduces all being and doing to nothing; 
Vedanta recognizes naught but the Self; Christianity finds 
in the world-whole no values at all when compared with 
the personal principle in man. Yet the factor that religion 
should emphasize is not the denial of nature, which is so 
scientifically exact and aesthetically fit, but the affirmation of 
humanity which is destined to out-top the universe and exist 
in and for itself. It is in behalf of the soul that religion comes 
forth, and while the same striving for humanity appears in 
the categories of cognition and the intuitions of aesthetics, 
the religious affirmation of humanity does not rest until 
it has disclosed the idea of God, wherein it reposes. Reli- 
gious consciousness thus makes it impossible to believe that 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 31 

nature can contain the being of man or satisfy his ideals, and 
the central impulse on the part of the soul, by which it 
seeks to posit itself is reinforced by this particular form of 
human culture. Human cognition and human art, which, 
as concept and idea, transcend the world of time and space, 
unite with human worship in revealing the one world of 
humanity within man. 

While religion sustains the same general relation to 
the world and humanity as appears in logic and aesthetics, 
it accentuates the peculiar problem of life by emphasizing 
the personal principle in man. In a certain sense, thought 
goes on and taste simply expresses itself; indeed, judgments 
of truth and beauty are most nearly perfect when they are 
impersonal. Religion finds its center in the ego which is 
the most satisfactory conception of the soul. As a result, 
it is the soul which confronts the universe and maintains 
its personal quality so supremely that the Upanishads make 
the world equivalent to the soul, while in the Gospels, 
the whole of nature is somewhat inferior to the personal 
ego. Under such treatment, the general principle of human- 
ity receives a more acute form since it is identified with 
that inner, personal consciousness which each may feel for 
himself. In this exalted frame of mind, the seer finds him- 
self in the world-whole "The Infinite indeed is below, 
above, behind, before, right and left — it is indeed all this. 
Now follows the explanation of the Infinite as the I: I am 
below, I am above, I am behind, before, right and left — I am 
all this." (Khandogya-Upanishad, vn. 25). 

Not only does the personal principle, in the perfected 
religions of spirit, afford a clear contrast between nature 
and humanity, but it also indicates a sufficient reason for 
the individual's striving toward that human goal. Every 
form of human religion which comes to the point whence 
it can discern the presence of humanity in the world of 
nature, invests the soul with a peculiar value. This being 
done, it is no longer necessary to make metaphysical distinc- 
tions between the being of the world and the essence of man, 
but the intrinsic quality of humanity appears as soon as the 
soul receives proper valuation. The ontological status of 
the soul need not be conceived in a manner radically 



32 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

different from the rest of the world, but the moral value of 
the person and his spiritual vocation in the world of humani- 
ty must receive recognition in any system which attempts to 
treat man as such. In religion, man is considered as pos- 
sessed of a quality so singular and incomparable that no 
quantification of external being can balance the intrinsic 
value of the soul. 

D — The Ethical Activity of Humanity. 

From this excursus into three distinct fields of culture, 
it becomes more and more convincing that man is not 
satisfied with the given order of reality. His world must 
be of an order native to his own being, for which reason 
he departs from nature and, by means of culture, seeks to 
penetrate the world of spirit. How august is the spectacle 
of man awakened to the possibilities of his humanity. A 
creature of nature, and possessing the usual qualities of 
thinghood, he develops to a degree of enlightenment which 
persuades him he is superior to the order which has produced 
him. His idealism spoils the universe; his art perfects 
nature; his religion excludes the world from the sphere of 
value. The naturistic in man can never account for these 
vigorous negations, and it is only when we relegate man to 
the genuine order of his being that we are able to account 
for him. As a problem, life consists in adjusting man to 
the world of virtue, of which relation nature and humanity, 
or the world of things and the world of persons, are placed 
at proper poles. From the history of human culture, philo- 
sophic, artistic, religious, we see how determined man is to 
posit his humanity; for in the striving toward this goal he 
has aroused all his human faculties for the purpose of a 
concentrated deed. 

When the human calling of man is appreciated, it 
will appear that the moral incentive is not the only one 
which influences his activity ; indeed, virtue is not the leading 
motive in the struggle for humanity. It is needless to 
command man to act; while he lives he will be active in a 
life which goes on of itself. The ethical phase of human 
existence and the moral adjustment of man to humanity, 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 33 

while not at all inferior to the logical, aesthetical, and 
religious correlations, must not be made equivalent to human 
life as such nor comparable to the pursuit of its perfection. 
One need not wish to limit the sphere of ethics to declare 
how subordinate to the totality of life is the abstract moral 
commandment. The view of life which we moderns have 
entertained has been thrown off its centre by an artificial 
moralism which dominated the central impulse toward hu- 
man self-affirmation. In the real presence of life, ethical 
theory retreats to the background, while victorious humanity 
posits itself in all the rich manifold of its content. Man 
was made for humanity, and morality was made for man. 

Like the other three phases of human striving, the 
ethical assumes its proper place when it it related to the 
unitary deed of mankind in his constant struggle for humani- 
ty. In this central stream are found the mingling of real 
and ideal, of nature and reason, of deed and thought, and 
in the midst of all is that great world-movement which 
consists in adjusting an animal to a higher and spiritual order 
of life. From the view-point of the one life-problem, it 
appears that action is capable of other than purely ethical 
forms of discussion, although the moral side of life is so 
imminent and the argument for it so convincing that the 
view of life which is usually entertained is the ethical one. 
Man will set reason at naught and become agnostic, but 
will he defy conscience and become unethical? There is a 
natural prejudice in favor of the moral side of human striv- 
ing, and as long as our discussion of the ethical does not 
commit the fallacy of accident, this preference for the moral 
may be indulged. Over the other phases of human culture, 
ethics has a certain advantage and, if we are to name the 
genus from the leading species, it is best to choose the moral 
as the typical phase of human striving. Cognition, while 
it has about it no more abstractness than is found in the 
formal view of the ethical, has a constant bearing upon outer 
nature of which it is knowledge and theory. Ethics, which 
is normative and critical to a degree which places it side 
by side with logic, differs from this philosophic science by 
sustaining and abiding references to man to whom it dictates 
laws of conscience as logic gives to nature laws of causality. 



34 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Of the other two phases of spiritual life, which affiliate in 
their participation in humanity, aesthetics is too sprightly 
in its methods to become a rival of logic, while religion is 
such an interested spectator in the plan of life that it cannot 
offer the cool presentation of the problem which ethics essays 
to furnish. 

Life is not ethics, but the philosophy of life is capable 
of the most consistent presentation when it is surveyed in 
the light of moral categories. Humanity is the major premise 
in an argument where ethics is the minor. It is the ethical 
conciousness of man which makes it possible for him to 
survey his nature and consider his destiny in philosophic 
fashion. This is not to be understood as though it meant 
that man can use ethics to solve problems which are logical, 
aesthetical, or religious; for in this respect ethics is no route 
royale. Plato surveys beauty and Kant truth from the 
standpoint of the good, and their aesthetics and logic are 
in so far imperfect. The application of the good is to life 
in general, not to some other discipline which possesses a 
method of its own. Hence it is best to adjust ethical science 
to the goal of life itself; morality may never give us truth, 
or beauty, or worship, but it may reveal human destiny and 
for this reason it is to be pursued as a fruitful form of 
philosophic study. 

Theoretical ethics and practical morality are now in a 
condition where they need readjustment to the central 
question of life itself. For the accomplishment of this task 
there must be elaborated a view which shall appreciate the 
reality of life and the formality of ethics. Like logical 
laws in themselves indispensable, moral maxims are ever 
critical and normative; they make possible the function of 
reflection, but something by way of content must be furnished 
by humanity itself. Rationality and morality have done 
nothing positive for the emancipation of man from nature: 
one has kept watch over the world, the other over man in the 
constant adjustment of these two phases of reality to each 
other. But the constructive work of humanity has been 
done in an artistic and religious fashion. Living and think- 
ing are the foci of humanity, not mere existence or mere 
consciousness as these arise in nature. Where ethics and 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 35 

logic elaborate characteristic judgments they lack the crea- 
tive power peculiar to religion and art which antedate them 
in time and excel them in influence. With only a general 
reference to morality and rationality, our human institutions 
arise as free contributary acts on the part of nature burdened 
as it is by an excess of conscious life. This excess is human- 
ity. 



II 

THE CONTINUITY OF HUMAN STRIVING 

I — THE CATEGORY OF DEVELOPMENT 

The first moment in the life of our humanity is found in 
an impulse toward spiritual self-assertion; the final one ap- 
pears in the organization of man into a world of humanity. 
In order to unite these widely separated elements of a 
philosophy of life, it becomes necessary to assume a mean 
principle which shall look upon human striving in its con- 
tinuity while it makes possible the construction of an order 
of human life. This uniting principle is found in history, 
the very vehicle of humanity. In order to adjust our human 
striving on the one hand and the fixed order oi humanity on 
the other to one and the same principle of history, it becomes 
necessary to view such history as both changing and con- 
tinuous, a condition of spiritual life wholly in keeping with 
the general nature of consciousness. Thus considered, his- 
tory includes ideas no more paradoxical than the general lite 
of man as a spiritual creature : they are those of progress and 
permanence, and in their ultimate imprint, they effect a re- 
conciliation of the temporal and eternal in the life of man- 
kind. Through this progressive change and permanent con- 
tinuity man's self-positing may be systematized. 

When we seek to relegate ethics to history, we must 
qualify our claims to avoid the false idea suggested by the 
term "history of ethics", for no such thing exists. As logic 
is but the abstract method according to which we arrange our 
outer impressions, so ethics is only an ideal way of construct- 
ing our inner feelings and impulses, and neither the logical 
nor the ethical in humanity assumes the positive and progres- 
sive form recognizable in art and religion. Implicit in all 
activity, the ethical does not find expression in the shape of 
institution, but ever remains as a formal view of human con- 

36 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 37 

duct which is carried on according to more vital principles. 
To state this essential truth of the abstract nature of ethics, 
one may further assert that the moral in man's will, like the 
logical in his understanding, has nothing phenomenal about 
it, and it is only in connection with the phenomenal that 
history can enter in. Yet our present consideration involves 
the whole question of life, and we are using the ethical 
method of consideration because it makes possible the cat- 
egories of value and dignity; and this human life has had 
a history which ethics can employ in arranging its theories 
according to a plan. Then the general principle of human 
striving objectified in art and religion may be reviewed from 
the analytical standpoints of logic and ethics. 

2 — THE ETHICAL MOMENT IN HISTORY 

While human history is indicative of a force which ever 
carries man forward, it further fulfills its office by conserv- 
ing the past in memory, so that the progress of man is never 
wholly free from the rudimentary forms of his earth-life. As 
a creature of the natural order, man is destined to affirm 
himself as spiritual, a performance making human living 
and thinking a unique combination of the low and the high. 
Man never becomes wholly denaturized, nor does his life 
consist in a decisive affirmation of one phase of life and the 
negation of another. For this reason, it is unwise to con- 
trast sense and spirit in man as though they were upon the 
same level; by their very nature they adjust themselves, not 
horizontally, but vertically in accordance with the progress 
of man from nature to reason. The love of pleasure and 
the love of virtue may have their place in one and the same 
human heart, but their position is not of the same ethical 
dignity. Hedonism is native to man and the argument 
against it is not a sweeping affirmation or negation, but a 
critical exposition pointing out the degree of sufficiency in- 
herent in the view. Hedonism is naturism in an immediate 
form of consciousness; but life consists of the culture of 
something remote. 

Alas! how hesitant is the spirit of humanity to reveal 
itself. Sufficient is it for us to know that we were destined, 



38 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

not for nature, but for culture and the eternally human. 
The mystery of the soul is as great as the mystery of the 
world: they are the same, and we are as far from knowing 
what to do as we are from knowing what to think. To 
follow the real in the form of immediate desire is natural 
and objectively necessary, but who will believe that, having 
done this, we have done all? To pursue the rational in the 
form of duty is apparently safe, but it is not an intelligent 
way of living, nor does it account for many a performance 
in art, religion, and the social world that man is called upon 
to undertake. No great amount of light is cast upon the 
problem of life by the past, for we know as little of what 
man has done as of what he should do. But if the idea of 
continuity is valid, man has been asserting his humanity in 
contrast to an otherwise enveloping natural order. 

In the midst of this universal striving for both being and 
consciousness, humanity has preserved its unity and has not 
been betrayed by history. From the beginning, it has been 
the history of humanity as such, and whether upon a low 
plane or a high one, man has ever been man. Hedonically 
viewed, man seeks himself in the pursuit of pleasure; from 
the rigoristic standpoint, he asserts himself by means of duty ; 
while in humanism he is afforded a more consistent mode of 
self-expression. On the historical side, these three forms of 
soul-life represent so many stages in the development of 
humanity. Where there was naturism, man sought him- 
self in the guise of a nature-moralist who found his being 
circumscribed by pleasure-pain; upon the plane of ration- 
alism a sterner type of self appeared in the form of a doer of 
duty; and thus between these two phases of human being, 
man himself, rather than his sensations or his ideas, was con- 
stantly made the subject of his own activity. As long as 
there have been feelings, thoughts, and intuitions, there have 
been unconscious hedonists, rationalists, and humanists, and 
historical development in the world of culture produces its 
most characteristic effects in bringing instincts into conscious- 
ness. , 

History when viewed from within involves somewhat 
more than origin and progress; there is the spirit of an eter- 
nal humanity which ever broods over this continuous effort 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 39 

to be, just as there is made possible a participation in the one 
humanity of the worldj In action the individual stands 
alone, separated from past and future by his own epoch; 
in thought he is united with the wholeness of humanity 
where no temporal distinctions are valid. Hence the com- 
mandment of Schleiermacher : Wirkt auf die Einzelnen, aber 
mit euer Betrachtung hebt Euch auf den Flugeln der Reli- 
gion hoher zu der unendlichen ungetheilten Menscheit. 
(Reden Uber Religion, n. s. 90.) When thus regarded, 
history contains no longer the demons of origin and develop- 
ment which have ever disturbed our modern rationalists in 
morality. Verily, we know that the moral began and in 
continuous fashion grew into a gradual perfection; and now 
we know that its history, instead of being a hindrance, was 
an aid to its purpose. There was history in religion and 
history in art, and thus the complete history of mankind can 
only point out how virtue and conscience gradually dawned 
upon the sensitive mind of a spontaneous nature-being which 
was in process of perfection. 

Our ideals are saved by virtue of that continuity which 
invests all human progress: it is the one humanity which 
everywhere asserts itself against the entirety of the objective 
order. In this world of humanity, the individual naturally 
participates. For where else could he be found? When 
the oneness of humanity and the integrity of the individual 
are assured, the plan of history facilitates the purpose of 
the moral reason. Man is destined for morality; but this 
same man is an animal, and the ideas of virtue and duty will 
dawn upon him gradually. He has the capacity, and, since 
the goal of his human striving is so remote from his im- 
mediate condition, continuous efforts with approximations to 
perfection must enter in as stages of preparation for man in 
his human education. History thus becomes the adjunct of 
humanity, and the chasm between nature and spirit is bridged 
by the plan of human progress. It is the historical view of 
humanity which invests the individual with his proper uni- 
versality, and the continuity of human progress is an order 
of things without parallel in the universe. Where the prin- 
cipium individuations tends to isolate the individual and 
thus reduce his spirithood to thinghood, and where mere 



40 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

evolution would obliterate personality altogether, the history 
of humanity acts ascvKafcirav for it adjusts the indivi- 
dual to his human realm in a manner which does 
violence to neither the particularity of the one nor the uni- 
versality of the other. For man, the history of humanity 
assumes the form of one personal present, in which indi- 
viduals among men, and single periods in history sustain an 
essential relation to the permanent goal of humanity. 

3 — THE HISTORICAL VIEW OF ETHICS 

In the midst of this general plan of human history, the 
position of ethics is not the same as that of either rights or 
religion. These forms of culture and civilization represent, 
not merely human instincts, but social institutions which 
assume perceptible forms in architecture with its court and 
temple, in literature with its statute and precept. Ethics 
accompanies these developments and ever exercises a critical 
function upon them, but in itself, it sustains a derivative 
relation to human progress, which goes on in some other 
than an intellectual fashion. Much the same may be said 
of logic whose judgments are concomitant with the develop- 
ment of humanity, without sustaining any influential rela- 
tion to living mankind. While the development of religion 
and rights has been manifold in form and rich in content, 
the evolution of ethics and logic has been like the growth of 
the mulberry tree, which after lying dormant for a long 
period, puts forth its buds spontaneously. In the antique 
period, speculation produced the concept and judgment; 
modern philosophy has witnessed the distinction of empirical 
and rational forms of knowledge. At the same time, ethics 
discovered an ancient good-virtue and a modern right-duty. 
If we add to these concepts an ancient feeling of eudaemonic 
and a modern sense of conscience, we shall have reviewed the 
history of our morality, around which various theories have 
ranged. 

The history of ethics is well nigh contradictory in termi- 
nology, and the only sense with which it may be invested is 
a schematic one, whose reality ever depends upon the absorb- 
ing history of humanity. Man is destined to pass through 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 41 

certain stages of development in the progress toward his 
humanity, and this plan of advancement and his own evolu- 
tion will consist in something more than doing certain deeds 
and undergoing certain experiences: it will involve a change 
of view, with respect to both himself and the world. And 
this change of view, which is as truly human as the con- 
tinuity of doing and suffering, involves the abstract sciences 
of logic and ethics. The canons of speculation and the 
norms of conduct have a place in the continuity of human 
striving, but it is incomparable with the solid position of 
human rights and religion which make up the bulk of actual 
living and guide mankind, not by ideals of validity of 
thought or value of action, but by external authority and 
tradition. Reason and conscience relate to humanity, not 
only occasionally, but in a negative fashion, where the 
theological traditions of the race are opposed by pure specu- 
lation, and legal standards are offset by ideal maxims of 
morality. Therefore, it may be said, the form of logic-ethics 
is that of ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi, while that of 
religion-rights is ratio agendi and ratio fiendi. 

Where humanity has had a history, there ethical science 
has undergone change; new categories of thinking and new 
ideals of striving have entered as the invariable accom- 
paniments of man's positive progress. The passivity of the 
east differs from that of the west; antique formalism with 
its classic finish is not the same as modern dynamism which 
is accompanied by romantic striving. Ethics exhibits a 
major history in outline, but not a minor history in detail. 
"Fixed" stars move, although not in planetary fashion, and 
the grand development of humanity makes room, at rare 
intervals, for some sort of ethical and logical mutation. 

History has not yet adjusted its considerations to the 
ideality of time and space; its methods involve paradox as 
soon as they are applied to the evolution of the human spirit. 
Our own employment of history, to introduce moral ideals 
in a systematic fashion, needs only to concern the continuity 
of humanity in the midst of its several attempts at self-reali- 
zation. If history emphasizes the circumstantial, it can only 
end in a view of ethical relativity which sacrifices all ideal 
worth in human activity. But if it uses continuity as its 



42 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ground, and keeps before it the implicit goal of all human 
self-positing, it can survey man upon the original plane of 
naturistic self-assertion and in the midst of temporarily 
hedonic impulses the central impulse will still stand out. 
Nature may not be relied upon but man in nature may be 
trusted with his human dignity. 

When history is idealized and removed from the pheno- 
menal order of time and place, its adaptability to spiritual 
life will appear and assume a convincing form. Only hu- 
manity knows history; only humanity progresses. And it is. 
the inwardness and unity of spiritual life which render to 
humanity the means of progress. Time is not the only, nor 
the essential, element in progress; it is but the sign of that 
real and inner change which makes reality what it is. The 
same sun passes over a tribe of nature-peoples and a society 
of men who are tending toward civilization, but the lapse of 
a thousand years, or less, will find the one group in the 
same condition of savagery, while the other has undergone 
those changes which are incident upon culture. Time-pass- 
age has been accompanied by real change in the one and by 
no progress in the other, and the essence of history now 
appears to reside in something other than time. In the 
employment of the same temporal element, one age will 
advance in science and morals while another will stagnate. 
Shall we say that this is because time is now more, now less, 
lenient with humanity? or shall we seek the cause within 
and find in the spontaneous life of the soirit a force which 
is put forth in a quasi-temporal way in the endeavor on the 
part of humanity to posit itself? History appears as an 
eternal order in which all forms and degrees of humanity 
participate, and the successive attempts which man makes in 
his progress toward human perfection find their unity in the 
common world of humanity and history. 

It is evident that history has laid hold of man and 
under its influence he is urged forward whence he knows 
not. The half-inscrutable purpose of the world has not 
remained aloof from consciousness, although no systema- 
tic view of human striving has appeared. Perhaps it is 
the will of humanity which invests man and infuses the 
sense of striving within him, without informing him as to 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 43 

the purpose of his life. Were we intended to employ our 
human time in sheer nature fashion? Or, again, are we 
wise in attempting a life according to reason in the frigid 
zone of abstraction? Are we justified in attempting a 
transmundane form of existence in the world of culture, 
the world of worship, the world of humanity? To these 
questions history has given some general answers by pointing 
out how man has departed from nature for the purpose of 
discovering and developing his inner humanity, although 
this world-movement was not completed in primitive times 
nor has it ever been universal in days of perfected culture. 
In different ages, individuals and groups of individuals have 
advanced beyond both nature and society in their pursuit of 
the self-sufficient goal of life, so that history rises before us 
as a pyramidal edifice narrowing as it ascends. Nevertheless, 
the sense of our human life, though dawning gradually 
through the haze of our nature-life, has ever been an object 
of interest and now it seems impossible for man to escape 
from humanity. 

4 — THE STAGES OF HUMAN HISTORY 

In addition to the general plan of historical continuity, 
uniting man's inner striving with the outer organization of 
this in a world of humanity, there appear certain marked 
stages of development, according to which humanity assumes 
something more than one simple form. If the ethical life 
abides in all history, special ethical methods should appear 
in these definite stages of human development; for the fluid 
nature of humanity does not fail to crystallize in a charac- 
teristic manner, so that the enlightened moralist may behold 
the problem of life to-day in the plan that humanity has 
chosen for its development. The historical present, when 
analyzed, becomes a cross-section of all human life, and the 
past becomes a parable unfolding to us the depths of our 
own moral being. To assume full cognizance of the human 
spirit in its progress is to run Hegel's risk, but this romantic 
philosophy of history is not the only one that has found some- 
thing dialectical in humanity, nor is his three-fold scheme of 
arrangement something solitary in the history of human 



44 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

speculation. The number three has no special sanctity, and 
the method of contradiction is not ever convincing; but the 
analysis of humanity may reveal triple types which can be 
elaborated without the magic of the Hegelian dialectic. But 
since our object is to use history only to corroborate the 
general plan of a three-fold humanistic system, we are not 
likely to be ensnared in the net prepared in our very sight. 
Our object is to observe the results of human history; the 
process is another consideration; and since the connection 
between ethics and history is so slender, we need only glance 
at what the latter suggests. The perfected philosophy of 
the Indo-Graeco-Germans does not fail to apprise us that 
our humanity advances from nature to spirit by the inter- 
vention of a rational mean thus giving us three types of 
humanity. In themselves these may be called (i) The 
Naturisticj (2) The Characteristic, (3) The Humanistic, 
corresponding to the ethical theories of hedonism, intuition- 
ism, and humanism. 

Though the great World-Spirit seems hesitant to reveal 
itself to the sons of men, something like a plan appears in the 
past achievements of the human race, and while we cannot 
assume that the Infinite Being adopted the methods of Trans- 
cendentalism, the general outline of a three-fold form of 
development may be made out. Man is passing from his 
origin in nature to his goal in the world of spirit ; meanwhile 
he is developing truly human character. Thus appear three 
forms of life. In the first, man lives the life of nature and 
knows only the guidance of fate; in the second, his civiliza- 
tion and culture determine him to life, by means of law; 
finally, he attains to freedom in the inner kingdom of 
humanity. Nature no longer contains him, for he has come 
into his own inner life. When ethics reviews the field of 
history thus divided, it is able to see how its views of hedon j 
ism, intuitionism, and humanism have their origin in the 
three types of life unconsciously assumed by man in his pro- 
cession on high. It is to be expected that the consciousness 
of humanity in man should be accompanied by a presentiment 
of this general scheme. 

About the earliest attempt to effect a classification of 
men was made by Kapila in his Sankhya philosophy. Where 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 45 

the Vedanta identifies man with the world through the one, 
objective Self, the Sankhya approaches this gradually by in- 
terposing grades of perfection which result in certain classes 
of men possessing three qualities or "Gunas." These act 
like cords binding man down to certain stages of being. The 
lowest is Tamas Guna of sense; the next highest, Rajas 
Guna of will; the highest, Sattva Guna of thought. (Cf. 
Aphorism 61.) Thus appear three kinds of knowledges: 
good knowledge which, coming from Sattva Guna, enables 
one to behold the one entity in all things; passionate know- 
ledge due to Rajas Guna and making one perceive only 
difference in the manifold; and dark knowledge of Tamas 
Guna which adheres to one single object as though it were 
the whole. As knowledge, so also action; good action is 
devoid of attachment, passionate action is egoistic, dark 
action is all delusion. Further appear three grades of in- 
telligence in action, where Sattva Guna shows just what 
should be done, while Rajas Guna affords no correct view 
of piety, which latter is ever misunderstood by the man of 
Tamas Guna. Finally, the three Gunas produce three 
kinds of happiness. The highest kind of happiness comes 
not immediately, but demands patient repetition, while at 
first as unwholesome as poison, it ends in that nectar which 
proceeds from the clear knowledge of self. Passionate hap- 
piness is sensuous and of sudden origin, and while at first 
it is like nectar, it finally turns to poison. The happiness 
of Tamas Guna deludes the self at both the beginning and 
end of its course. 

Before Plato had perfected a political system based upon 
a three-fold view of man and nature, Aeschylus discovered 
the steps the gods had taken in declaring their law unto 
men. First appeared the prophetess primeval; then Themis, 
or rectitude, who finally gave place to Phoebus, the god of 
spiritual knowledge (Eumenides, 1-9.) Plato's system un- 
ifies physics and politics upon the basis of a triple scheme of 
division. In the lowest order are found body, soul, 
mind, — o-to/ua, ^vxo, vovs whose human counterparts appear as 
appetite, desire, reason, — €7ri'0v/AaTiKov, dvfioihes, AoyicmKov. 
Upon this foundation, the philosopher erects an ethico- 
political system whose virtues of temperances, courage, wis- 



46 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

dom, — <r<t><f>po<rvvr} f avSpta, am^ia growing out of the fore- 
going elements in the macrocosm and microcosm, culminate 
in three classes of men in the ideal republic. These are the 
artisans, soldiers, rulers, — xP r Jf mT, ' (TTa ^ ncUovpoi, apvovres 
among whom the philosophers take the highest place. The 
inability of Plato to relate the virtue of justice to his re- 
public only reveals the firmness with which he adhered to 
the triunic order of his anthropocosmology. 

Gnosticism reveals the same conception of a triple order 
of humanity, as shown by the mystical system of Valentinus. 
Here the division is carried out uninterruptedly through na- 
ture, man, and Deity, for there are three gods, rpels Oeovs 
three minds, rpeis vovs, and three kinds of men, rpeis 
av9pu>7rovs. The three orders of men will be seen to corre- 
spond to the Gunas of Kapila and the classes of Plato. 
From the Deity emanate a series of eons as so many mani- 
festations of His abysmal being participating in the one 
Being according to different grades of spiritual perfection: 
pneumatical, psychical, hylical. Hence arise three kinds of 
men and three classes of people. The vXikol being the lowest 
in grade are not distinguishable from the material world, 
and thus it is impossible for them to attain to any degree of 
purity or blessedness. The if/vo-iKot while superior to the hy- 
lical men, are not of themselves immortal nor are they able 
to comprehend celestial affairs; knowledge and eternal life 
are possible for them only as they assume the powers and 
virtues of the pneumatic men. The irvev/jLariKOL possess germs 
of divine life and reflect the glory of God in the world of 
created things. Upon this psychological basis, Valentinus 
seeks to outline a philosophy of history in which Pagans as- 
sume the lowest position of hylical men, Jews the next rank 
of the psychical, while the highest order of the irvevjjua.Ti.KoC 
is reserved for those who, redeemed from the flesh and the 
low, have become Christians. 

A similar conception of mankind appears in Vico Scienza 
Nuova where the triple order of mankind is put upon a 
more consistent historical basis. Surveying the "ensemble de 
la societe!' as Michelet's translation expresses it, Vico notes 
three periods in the development of humanity, as well as three 
characteristic groups of rights and governments. The prim- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 47 

itive man possessed neither the idea of humanity nor the in- 
stinct to promote it, and In his civilization and culture he 
was hardly removed from nature. His temperament was 
poetical, while his philosophy was of a theological order, 
hence his idea of rights involved the notion of privilege and 
his government was theocratic. Second in order comes the 
heroic age whose idea of rights was interpreted in terms of 
force whence was erected an aristocratic form of govern- 
ment, and in civilization, law, and language, mankind was 
heroic. The culmination of human progress is attained when 
the moral nature succeeds the poetic and sensuous orders, and 
government, no longer theocratic or aristocratic, becomes 
democratic, while law and language become humanized. 

Schiller's conception of human history resembles the 
schemes of Valentinus and Vico, while his view of the soul 
reminds one of Kapila and Plato. He conceives of man 
as being made up of the extremes of sense and reason, de- 
pending upon his real being in the world and his ideal char- 
acter in ethics. Between these extremes plays the art-instinct 
upon which is based the aesthetical education of mankind. 
In his progress toward perfection, man passes through a 
sensuous, an aesthetical, and an ethical period, his develop- 
ment being furthered by the medium of art as it unites the 
material period at the beginning with the moral one at the 
end. For this office, art is specially fitted, since it possesses 
a sensuous quality while not wanting in spiritual signifi- 
cance, and promotes a form of pleasure not wholly alien to 
man's ethical interest. With this general conception of 
progress, Schiller endeavors to classify various forms of 
humanity, but does not seem to preserve the consistency of 
his aesthetic system. In the essay on "Grace and Dignity" 
he seems to place humanity above the perfection of sense in 
grace and the realization of reason through dignity, while 
the "Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Mankind," 
tends to change the order, so that the art of humanity as- 
sumes the second place while man's moral perfection takes 
the highest position. Yet the poet-philosopher realizes that 
there is a vast gulf between the ideal essence of humanity 
and its realization in life, just as he considers history to be 
the means of bringing about the unity of the human spirit. 



48 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

In our own age, this triple scheme reappears in Ibsen's 
Emperor and Galilean, where the "Third Empire" of the 
future takes the place of spiritual Christianity, just as the 
latter supplanted sensuous Paganism. 

5 PHASES OF THE MORAL LIFE 

All the systems of speculation examined above agree in 
their classification of men; the modern ones put this upon 
a historical basis whereby they show how man has passed 
from a condition of nature-life through a period of conflict 
to a spiritual goal in the world of humanity. The one 
humanity in its fusion of sense and spirit thus exhibits three 
stages of progress: a preliminary one, where it simply rests 
in the lap of nature; a perfect one where it reposes in the 
world of spirit; between these a long and restless age of 
conflict finds man seeking to adjust himself to the lower and 
higher orders within him. But in the process of humanizing 
man the ideal is not so far removed from experience that it 
cannot be an object of inquiry or of practical endeavor, and 
the Indo-Graeco-Germanic orders of spiritual development 
occasionally reveal this. Thus Kapila postulates Sattva- 
Guna as the finest human quality while Plato puts his philo- 
sophers at the head of the ideal Republic. Valentinus sees 
history culminating in the production of pneumatic men, 
while Vico and Schiller outline history in such a way that 
the age of humanity crowns all spiritual development. So 
far as the actual development of humanity is concerned the 
three stages involved seem to include (i) an indefinite age 
of naturisntj (2) a period of moralism making up most of 
the actual history of man, and (3) an age of humanism be- 
longing almost wholly to the future. The philosophy of 
ethics has unconsciously followed such a plan in outlining 
its ideals; at any rate it has emphasized the first and second 
forms of conduct and has further suggested a reconciliation 
in the form of a common view of life. 

The systematic determination with which man asserts 
his humanity makes the traditional study of ethics seem in- 
efficient; it assumes too much and attempts too little in the 
way of a philosophy of life. From significant glimpses into 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 49 

his history, man seems intent upon asserting his spiritual 
humanity over against his natural animality, and the length 
of the process, marked as* this is by successive endeavors and 
gradual approximations to the ideal, indicates how central 
and absorbing the problem of humanity is to mankind. Just 
as the end of human life cannot be seen by the primitive man, 
so its ideals cannot be realized by him. A cumulative 
movement thus becomes necessary and having turned away 
from nature, man must similarly oppose the nature-like type 
of culture which has constituted the second stage of his 
evolution, As blind force and unthinking sense must give 
way before the ideas of law and understanding, so, finally, 
must these be supplanted by the notion of freedom and spirit- 
ual culture. The savage is not man, nor yet the indivi- 
dualist of an age characterized by national ideals; both must 
abandon the field to the humanist who sees the unity of man- 
kind, and aims at the community of culture. 

Modernism, whose current decadence is so lamentable, 
does not fail to reveal the significance of the tripartite 
scheme. Our naturalism, which unites the data of sense 
with the elements of desire to form the ideal of immediate 
existence, is not wholly unlike the primitive stage of man- 
kind, represented by Tamas-Guna and hylical men of orien- 
tal thought, or the more loftly estimates of naive and poetical 
peoples, suggested by Vico and Schiller. Rationalism and 
rigorism become the second stage, which in the eastern mind 
was characterized by passion and activity of life, while with 
Plato and Vico it assumed an heroic form. The third 
theory is the prototype of an age hardly yet realized; hence 
we cannot use the definite terms of Sattva-Guna, the "philo- 
sophoi", which ?ppeared so clearly to Kapila and Plato, but 
must follow our moderns and outline in general an era of 
humanity, in which life-values are set in a new light, and 
the end of human existence more adequately represented. 
Here the particular method is the ethical one, which repro- 
duces the three-fold scheme in the order of a Hedonism, a 
Rigorism, and a Humanism. 

These terms indicate a clearer form and a richer content 
than our particular ethical theories bring out; they stand for 
types of life which pervade the individual and guide the race 



50 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

in its development. There is something hedonic in all men 
and the desire for happiness in the sense of immediate pleas- 
ure is as natural as breathing. Hedonism has an equally 
secure place in the race, and at the primitive period of man's 
existence external interests were so imminent that utility 
masked all the other functions of the human spirit. Rigorism 
connects itself with a perod of social history where individual 
nations impress upon their citizens the character of an im- 
perative principle. Our "intuitions" are the survival of an 
imperious age, which began and ended in authority. Obliga- 
tion, law, duty, autonomy are the fibrous elements of an 
historic type, rationalistic and rigorous in every detail. The 
humanic ideal belongs to the morality of the future. Itself 
a synthesis of natural hedonism and stern voluntarism, it 
preserves the vital elements of human conduct in the midst 
of worthy ideals. As the race abandons blind nature, and 
withdraws also from a regime of "blood and iron," which 
regards man as a "political animal," it approaches a human- 
istic ideal, the consciousness of which finds its way into the 
minds of the representative thinkers of modernism, just as 
some inkling of it was felt by Sanskrit and Grecian philo- 
sophers, at the culmination of their respective epochs. Kapila's 
derivation of a third order of life was realized by Gautama, 
whose humanitarian system is not without relation to 
Sankhya; Plato's highest type of men was reflected by the 
Stoics, the original humanists of Europe. 

In modern times, traditional moralism, such as has grown 
up in England, between the physico-political systems of 
Hobbes and Spencer, has screened from the contemplative 
spirit the totality of life wherein the meaning of human 
existence is to be found; nevertheless there have been ex- 
ceptional moments, when isolated thinkers have risen above 
the petty quarrels of the schools, instances of this superiority 
being found in Shaftsbury and Adam Smith. With a few 
such exceptions, the modern ethical writer has been a mere 
theorist, who has been adroit in the use of casuistical device, 
but weak in the employment of philosophical principle. Not 
life according to theory, but theory according to life — such is 
the only safe method of procedure. Let culture and human- 
ity transcend our modern scholasticism! Before this hope 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 51 

can be realized, it is not out of place to conclude this intro- 
ductory division with the observation that there is nothing 
extraordinary in the three-fold view of human nature, which 
will be pursued. Not only practical philosophy, but specu- 
lative thinking also, makes headway by distinguishing be- 
tween sense and understanding, between empirical and ra- 
tionalistic modes of thinking; and where the philosophic 
program culminates is in the adoption of a third principle, 
like that of reason, which surmounts the realm of under- 
standing as the latter transcends the world of sense. The 
possibility of a third type of thinking and living is here to 
be investigated in connection with a philosophy of life. 



Ill 

THE WORLD OF HUMANITY 

I — HUMAN STRIVING AND HISTORICAL PROGRESS 

The individual impulse toward self-assertion and the 
social instinct for the self-positing of humanity have only one 
end in view; it consists in postulating and perfecting 
a world of humanity. This world is an inner ont. As the 
world of nature is known by its forms and revealed through 
its development, so the world of humanity appears in indivi- 
duals and is carried out in human history. If the world is 
not a man, humanity is a world-order, and it is the cosmic 
quality in man which enables him to comprehend the totality 
of the world in its forms and values. Nature is nothing to 
nature, but she is everything to man who seeks her as the 
correlate of his own being: where she has universality he 
has inness, and the union of the two brings about the human 
world as an order. Humanity cannot exist apart from in- 
dividuals, nor can individuals exist apart from humanity. 
Man's participation in the human order is dependent upon 
the unity of spiritual life which hovers over all persons but 
settles upon the few. "They that are awake," said Heracli- 
tus, "have one world in common — era kcu kolvov koct^ov — but 
every one of those who sleep turns aside unto a world of his 
own." (95.) And it is the common world of awakened 
human beings which establishes the one order of humanity. 
With the animal, as with the nature-man, no such world-life 
is possible in either action or consciousness; but where cul- 
ture enters in man emerges from the night of his isolation 
and enters upon his humanity. 

At the outset, man seems farther removed from systema- 
tic life than the lower orders of being, since he is marked by 
individuality, which makes his general humanity less ap- 
parent than the animality of the beast, where the type is the 

52 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 53 

salient principle. For this reason, it becomes necessary to 
evince the concept ma$, the idea of whose being has so long 
been taken for granted; only as we understand our subject 
may we assume to dictate concerning his conduct. Was 
man made for desire, for duty, or for some other ideal of 
life? These questions lie on the table until we begin to 
understand man's destiny in the world of nature-spirit. 
Man's mind humanizes him: culture and civilization, which 
are the inner and outer forms of life according to humanity, 
show how man is bent upon genuine conduct and in the light 
of human penchant, we must judge of those moral systems 
which survey him hedonically or as a duty-doing animal. 
Man makes his environment in the mental act of conceiving 
it ; he sets for himself a goal of his own elaboration and never 
feels constrained to achieve the ideals of mere nature or sheer 
reason. That which appears to be the least of his activities 
and the object of his consciousness is a real order of human 
existence — the world of humanity. 

As human self -positing is directed toward human world- 
hood, so the progress of living humanity has no other end. 
Humanism in both action and reflection reveals the con- 
trast between nature and culture, between the immediate 
interest and the remote one. Humanity is the denouement 
of this positing and this progress, and upon the three stages of 
human history it becomes ever a clearer idea and a stronger 
motive. In man the struggle to live does not end with, life 
nor confine itself to natural forces. There is one grand 
affirmation of being which Schopenhauer may style "die 
Bejahung des Willens zum Leben" while Eucken calls it 
"Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt." Man strives 
after humanity as the beast struggles for animality. Pessim- 
ism may regard the affirmation of humanity as a mistake, but 
the mischief has been done and if man cannot make a suc- 
cess of spiritual life, he has already made a failure of his 
original animal existence and cannot return to nature; 
hence progress is inevitable. 

The usual setting of man is found in nature, and the 
prejudice against humanity is deep-seated. We seek the 
source of man in sense or in reason, but not in himself. Our 
standard is ever an outward one which has not advanced be- 



54 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

yond the Stoical life according to nature; only in recent 
times has the life according to humanity begun to receive 
recognition. When the historical view of man magnifies 
his individuality to something like worldhood, the contrast 
between outer naturistic facts and inner humanistic ideals 
becomes as clear in idea as it is intense in will. Man is 
determined to become human, and no goal in positive sense 
or negative reason can delay his activities. Partial ethical 
systems, which do not relegate man to the world of humani- 
ty, do not see that he is not content with mere obedience, 
but is bent upon the positing of a world-order peculiar to 
his human nature. The possibility of this realm in human 
experience has been questioned by the mind which has usually 
been guided by the critical disciplines of logic and ethics and 
not by the creative forms of culture which are yielded by art 
and religion. In these positive performances of the human 
spirit, history is justified of her children and the affirmation 
of man's intrinsic nature cannot be hidden in the world o£ 
art and ,the world of worship. 

In idea, man is coming abreast of that humanity which 
already exists in will, and he is now ready to reduce to con- 
templation that which has been the object of conquest. The 
old rationalism, which made man in its own image, never 
gave his life a human content; while the newer naturalism, 
which sought to breed a race of instinct-serving animals, 
failed to invest him with the form of humanity. Mean- 
while, the new age emerges from such pseudo-modernism 
and exercises the belief that man is now himself, and at one 
with his humanity. Rationalistic duty has come in for repu- 
diation; naturalistic desire has met renunciation, as man sets 
out for the world of his humanity. Life is too vast for such 
boundaries; too victorious for such half-hearted, half-human 
ideals. Modern morals have revolved upon such poor pivots 
that the most obvious thing about man — his humanity — 
seems obscure and unsafe. The world of humanity appears 
dramatic and we cannot quite give up our faith in the simple- 
hearted "free moral agent," who had to choose between 
abstract duty and concrete desire, between a mere character- 
less "self" and an equally non-human "other." The com- 
plexity of life and the richness of its content demand the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 55 

idea of actor rather than agent, and in the failure of the 
naturistic ideals of experience and understanding, the world 
of humanism appears as man's true philosophic place. 

Metaphysically constituted and morally constrained, man 
is still a human being. Civilization and culture have emanci- 
pated him from nature, and in the consciousness of free and 
final humanity, ethics feels the need of new methods and 
new categories. The airless landscape, which found its 
perspective in line alone, is giving way to the aerial world 
of living contemplation; and the draughtmanship which re- 
lied upon hard outline is superseded by chromatic composi- 
tion which assembles its objects synthetically. Idealism is 
not lost when art seeks nature, because now she seeks it in 
a form consonant with human perception; and an ethical 
view which looks for life rather than line, for color and 
not mere form, is not far from a spiritual view of man as 
human. Modern misoneism is fading, and our scorn of 
humanity passes with it. Nothing but world-life will satis- 
fy the aroused spirit of humanity, and in the light of this 
impulse, which passes from selfhood to worldhood, must the 
history of culture be considered. Both the critical and con- 
structive forms of human intellectual activity are instructive 
at this juncture, and when we perceive what thought has 
already done, we see that the kingdom of humanity is at 
hand. On the critical, logico-ethical side, human thought 
and action have elaborated, in idea, a realm peculiar to man, 
his cognition and conation; while, in a positive fashion, the 
function of the aesthetico-religious has been to construct such 
an order in human consciousness. Beneath and behind both 
is the one world of humanity. 

2 — THE WORLD OF HUMANITY IN THEORY 

Both thought and action are guided by reason, hence this 
reflective form of human striving will assume a somewhat 
abstract character. Nevertheless, since man is more than 
his mind, his rationality will appear in its proper light as 
something inferior to his humanity, and around the borders 
of logic and ethics extends the widening circle of spiritual 
life. In logic, the validity of thought must be determined 



56 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

according to a human norm; in ethics, the value of ideals 
waits for man to render his decision. From both we learn 
how all human activity is under the sway of that central im- 
pulse to exist which makes humanity what it is. 

I The World of Thought. Reason is a superior means 
which man employs in the assertion of his humanity, but it 
is ever a means, never an end. In the order of discovery, 
man may say, "I think, therefore I exist;" but in reality the 
order is reversed; "I exist, therefore I think." Speculative 
thought arises within man as something indigenous to his 
humanity and not as an extra product forced upon him from 
without, and for this reason, we must abandon the notion 
that thinking has a special reference to nature as object and 
see that it belongs to humanity as subject. The problem of 
life is so inclusive that it cannot be solved apart from mental 
activity, and the rise of knowledge is a sign that man recog- 
nizes his human vocation in the universe. In the midst of 
this intellectual work, which is included in the total deed of 
humanity, there is something more than a cognitive impulse ; 
thought has a creative function and assists humanity in con- 
structing a characteristic world-order, distinct from the world 
of nature. Human thinking has ever entertained the 
thought that man is not quite hemmed in by material objects 
or confined to the world of percepts. In response to this 
call to humanity, thought has constructed an order of being, 
too rare perhaps for human existence were it the sole environ- 
ment of men, but symptomatic of that life-in-itself that be- 
longs to humanity. The life of contemplation, which has 
claims to value in comparison with the life of conquest or the 
life of enjoyment, makes necessary the existence of a mental 
realm in which humanity may realize its calling. The major 
history of culture cannot conceal the fact that man has 
thought and acted as though there were a world of con- 
templation in which his spirit might dwell. Religion, 
philosophy and science have elaborated a cosmos of intellect 
as man's true possession. 

Aryan intellectualism has ever been nourished by the 
hope of finding the mental world of humanity. The Veda 
put forth its plea in the form of a Selfhood which was con- 
ceived of in independence of the outer world of sensations 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 57 

and the inner order of immediate, personal impressions. 
When the devotee is cftunseled to seek the Self, it is not for 
the sake of any mere personal self-consciousness, but in order 
that man may attain to humanity and find his Self in Brah- 
man. This Self, in which the contemplative soul partici- 
pates, is one and infinite. A second step toward the intellec- 
tual human order was taken by Greek philosophy, where 
Parmenides began a search for pure Being as coriv efoa 
whence Plato could invest the same ontology with the mental 
significance of iSea. Since the passing of classic specu- 
lation, the history of philosophy has looked to antiquity for 
the perfection of "a world of ideas," although it has not felt 
at liberty to relate this notion to that one progressive mental 
life which is the life of humanity itself. Modern intellec- 
tualism has not been blessed with that unity which pervaded 
the oriental sense of Selfhood or the classic conception of 
mental worldhood ; it has been divided against itself. Never- 
theless, humanity has not relinquished its demand for a 
cognitive realm for man, nor has our modernism, with its 
theory of knowledge, failed to respond. We have learned 
to look for knowledge for knowledge's sake, and since this 
ideal of pure cognition is directed away from nature, it is 
one approach nearer to man. 

As Hindoos and Greeks intellectualized humanity, so the 
Germans have performed the same service in recent times. 
The romantic idealism which followed close upon the Kritik 
reveals this mental freedom in a perfect degree, but even the 
more reputable and critical philosophy of Kant and Schopen- 
hauer carries out the same idea. These realistic philoso- 
phers contrast reason with both sense and will, and in spite 
of the competition involved, idealism reduces space and time, 
substance and causality to the mental order alone. The 
truth of a mental world for humanity is even nearer realiza- 
tion to-day than it was in the naive assumptions of the Indo- 
Grecians, and though we know more about nature, we 
know more about mind, while above both forms of these 
phenomenal orders arches the one intellectual life of man. 

The modern limitation of the intellect is an advantage 
to humanity which has itself set the boundaries of its own 
intellectual activity. To feel the significance of all our 



58 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

skepticism it is necessary to observe how mental limitation has 
not been impressed upon man from without as something 
alien to his nature, but inwardly as something allied with 
the genuine nature of humanity. We know that religion is 
not all, that art is not everything; we must realize that 
knowledge too is subordinate to imperial humanity. Man is 
the way, the truth, the life. Voluntarism, if it has not dis- 
lodged intellectualism, has shown that man possesses some- 
thing more than mentality, and if we are called upon to 
admit that the will is superior to the intellect, we may com- 
plete the proposition by saying, man is superior to will. It 
is the world of genuine humanity which encircles the world 
as idea, and man's progress toward human selfhood has 
simply made use of several stages of Aryan intellectualism. 

2 The Ethical World-Order. The critical conception 
of a human world-order which has shown itself in pure 
cognition is not wanting in a second aspect where the world 
appears in the form of pure conation. Like logic, ethics 
cannot accomplish its purpose without an appeal to the on- 
tological; hitherto, our speculative and practical forms of 
philosophy have not assumed human responsibility, but have 
satisfied themselves with an outer systematic completeness. 
Morality belongs to man, and the final appeal is not to con- 
science, but to humanity itself, in whose behalf the sense of 
approval and disapproval operates. Morality is a means to 
the one end of all human striving; it serves man only as it 
is capable of world-significance. The immediate pleasure of 
the Cyrenaics and the isolated virtue of the Cynics are in- 
capable of ruling man, who has cosmic elements in his 
nature, and all systems which have exerted sway over human- 
ity have had something endless about them. Human life 
according to pleasure can never be so cramped, and human 
life according to virtue can never be so crabbed that some 
sense of the totality of things will not dawn upon the mind 
and invigorate the will. Man cannot seek refuge from 
humanity in these crannies of life-philosophy; he was des- 
tined to attain to full human being. 

A strong Semitic tendency has led man to postulate an 
ethically good, where the Aryan instinct persuaded him to 
premise a logically true. The world-character of the good 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 59 

docs not seem to be as evident as the cosmic conception of 
ideas as reals; nevertheless the practical belief in the supre- 
macy and permanence bf righteousness can have no other 
meaning. Israel had no such philosophy as India developed, 
but it was possessed of an enduring moral belief which has 
accomplished as much in the actual life of humanity. In- 
deed, is not Hebraism as strong to-day as Hellenism? The 
world of forms, which envelops human thinking, is no more 
august than the world of values, which encompasses the 
human will. In this way, it comes about that there is an 
ontology of doing as well as of thinking; for there are 
metaphysical elements in ethics as well as in logic. Such 
has been the appreciation of Semitism to modern philosophy, 
and the enduring instinct to obey has assumed an appro- 
priate cosmic form. The result has been the elaboration of 
a moral world-order, self-constituted and self-contained. 
Ethics has been made more than a critical norm ; it has taken 
on content and reality. In this way, the good has been 
treated as real in the midst of its ideal form. 

Not only the general problem of the good inclines philo- 
sophy to invest its categories with cosmic significance, but 
special ethical problems seem incapable of presentation, much 
less solution, upon any other basis than that of a spiritual 
order of humanity. As an example of this, we may cite the 
case of moral consciousness in man, in whose mind it assumes 
the form of a not-thou, whence proceed all moral command- 
ments. Man may have demeaned himself slavishly toward 
the moral ideal, and submitted to conscience and duty with- 
out asking why; but that only shows how he has endowed 
the ethical with worldhood, while failing to invest himself 
with selfhood. The modern man's knowledge has seemed 
too great for his understanding, his duty too vast for his 
will. Moral sense has been a world-consciousness, in which 
the idea of the good received a real content. Upon the 
eudaemonistic side, the result has been the same; the will 
in its ever-increasing demands has created a world-order of 
well-being in the form of universal happiness. This stands 
out in the mind, not merely as a possibility which the in- 
dividual may realize, but as an actuality toward which, so 
ran the optimistic argument, mankind was ever tending. 



60 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Man has sought either to satisfy the world or to have the 
world satisfy him; here it has been a duty-debt which he 
owed the universe, there it has been a desire which he would 
have that universe satisfy. It has been a Semitic pragmatism 
which sees no purpose in the world but a practical one; it 
relates to the contemplative world-order only upon the 
quantitative side of universality. But, in the midst of this 
remote epic existence, man has within him a lyrical life, 
which makes possible a more vital view of his humanity. 

3 — POSITIVE VIEW OF THE WORLD OF HUMANITY 

From the foregoing, it will be seen, how our thought 
strives to fortify the idea that man's genuine life is lived in 
a realm which is not materialistic, but humanistic. This 
conviction was clarified by a view of human thought and 
action, whose bases appeared to consist in something universal 
and necessary. Neither outer facts nor inner percepts can 
account for human knowledge; neither outer incentives nor 
inner motives can explain human action. To premise 
humanity is to postulate the world in which it is realized. 
This august truth is not unnoticed in art and religion, which 
may lack somewhat of the penetrating metaphysical exact- 
ness of logic and ethics, but which atone for this weakness 
in form by a richness of positive content whereby the reality of 
the human world-order becomes more credible. Both art 
and religion possess perceptible forms which make up a 
world of beauty and world of worship; and clothed upon 
with these intuitions, culture takes its place in contrast to 
nature. 

I The World of Culture, In both the ancient form of 
objective beauty and the modern principle of subjective 
taste, the reality of the aesthetical has ever made its presence 
felt. The source of beauty is within man who possesses a 
sensitivity which is alive to something more than the mere 
concrete in nature and the abstract in mind. Of this aesthe- 
tic consciousness the form is intuition, the content feeling. 
Thus viewed, beauty is a purely human trait which finds in 
nature the symbol of this sense, or the material which art 
must perfect. In connection with this inner source, beauty 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 61 

has a world-significance, inasmuch as it has no end and 
applies universally to .human minds. Aesthetics has the 
same range as logic and is wanting in no sense of the univer- 
sal and necessary; at the same time it shows its humanistic 
superiority over nature by its freedom from the logical labor 
which the understanding employs to secure sufficient ideas. 

With this inner range and supremacy, art has attempted 
to signalize man's victory over the world of sensible forms, 
and the elaboration of the fine arts reveals human competi- 
tion with nature. However unconscious the genial work of 
art may have been, the manifest motive is found in the desire 
to surround man with objects in harmony with his humanity. 
Indeed, the genius of humanity, which can never remain con- 
tent with nature, has exerted itself to establish a realm 
wherein man's spiritual nature might develop. Art is a 
world-order and one fitted for humanity alone. The world 
of knowledge belongs to the mind; the world of conduct is 
the product of the will; the world of beauty is a unique 
product of man's nature in its totality. All true artists live 
positive ones as art and religion. These four disciplines 
in the world of eternal humanity wherein all striving and 
suffering are intelligible. As the enlightened men in Plato's 
myth of the cave (Repub. Bk. vn) are bewildered first by 
going into the light and then by returning to the darkness, 
so he who sees humanity in contrast with nature finds it diffi- 
cult to think and act according to routine. 

Where the artistic view of man seems fraught with a 
certain vagueness, which renders the cosmic conception of 
beauty invalid, the historical phase of culture rehabilitates 
the waning power of art and secures man anew in his own 
human realm. The heated present is bound up in immediate 
interests with local and temporary significance, and the em- 
pirical man of the day must ask, What shall we eat and 
drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed and housed? 
The cool past has a different meaning. In the history of 
culture, we do not seek the memorials of these utilities of 
time and space, but inquire into the place of the permanent 
in the life of a former nation. What is Hellenism but 
poetry, philosophy and plastic? And what can history de- 
sire to contemplate but these phases of man's world-life, 



62 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

where, by means of remote pursuits, he sought to emanci- 
pate himself from the snare of sense and the sting of mortal- 
ity. All genuine history concerns those strivings which are 
still dominant in mankind, and the unity of human, spiritual 
life can hardly be denied when the culture of the present, 
mutatis mutandis, affiliates with the culture of the past to 
form a total, timeless humanity. 

Apart from the worldhood of humanity, the progress of 
culture remains opaque to all analysis. There has been 
growth, not mere crystal-like accretion; and this inner prog- 
ress of mankind toward humanity would have been impossible 
without that unifying principle of spiritual life which re- 
lates man to an order of his own. When surveyed from the 
conventional standpoint, humanity appears to consist of a 
happy generalization which, in nominalistic fashion, extends 
its nature over individuals and particular groups of persons; 
but the Platonic idea, which is here involved, stands for the 
perfect in character, as well as for the permanent in form; 
and when humanity is adjusted to the universe, it assumes 
the place of an attracting goal, which draws man away from 
individuality to selfhood and world-life. When, under the 
inspiration of art, man emancipates himself from the sensuous 
and immediate in nature, he must have some other realm 
in which he may live and realize himself. Nature has no 
place for perfection of his selfhood; hence it is by means of 
a natural and unconscious tendency that he acts as though an 
order of humanity actually existed. It is the world of 
humanity without which the origin of art cannot be ex- 
plained or its ground justified. 

2 The World of Worship. Religion is quite at home 
in that world of humanity toward which these other phases 
of culture incessantly strive. When reason abandons the 
concrete for the abstract, when conscience aligns a form of 
conduct distinct from impulse and habit, when art creates 
an ideal object of interest, which is independent of particu- 
lar percepts and private pleasure, religion obeys the same 
humanizing instinct and instructs man to affirm his spiritual 
nature in contrast to the world about him. And of all 
these forms of human self-assertion, religion is the most 
complete in its breach with nature, just as it is accompanied 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 63 

by the most fruitful ontological results. It is fitting, there- 
fore, that our examination of the particular phases of the 
inner world of humanity should conclude with the world of 
worship. 

Like art, religion possesses an inner nature which awakens 
spontaneously to the demands of a self-positing humanity. 
No outer facts evoke it, no external needs arouse it, but in 
freedom it puts forth its native powers. And like art, 
religion expresses itself in a manner comparable to the per- 
ceptible forms of nature ; that is, in a positive manner in the 
institutions of art and of worship. The sense of these 
positive phases of human contemplation is interpretable only 
as we assume the existence of a world-life in man. Such 
religious performances as are noted in the sacred books of 
the world would be impossible if it were not for the on- 
tological nature of man, for it is only the world of humanity 
within which can comprehend and evaluate the world of 
nature without. Only as the eye is sunlike in form, if not 
in nature, can it perceive the sun. With his disposition to 
value his experiences, man begins to feel somewhat of the 
dignity belonging to his human nature, just as he appreciates 
the strategic position which he occupies in the total world- 
order. Under the instruction of religion, man finds it im- 
possible to dwell in the world of nature, and yet it seems 
unadvisable to aspire to an order of abstract ideas. Man 
thus finds it necessary to relate his being to an appropriate 
realm where his nature receives just treatment and his work 
due appreciation. 

The history of positive religion is not wanting in evidence 
of a world of worship, which is not only implied, but direct- 
ly affirmed by characteristic universal religions. One needs 
only to consult the Upanishads and the New Testament to 
learn this important lesson. In the one, it is an intellectual- 
istic teaching wholly in keeping with the mental practice of 
the Aryan: in the other, it is more ethical, which would be 
expected in connection with Semitism. The Vedantist 
styles the world of worship, "The City of Brahman," which 
contains the fulfillment of all desires for selfhood as well as 
all possibilities of worldhood. (Khandogya Upan. vin.) 
To the enlightened mind, this religious world-order con- 



64 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

tains all that there is of truth and blessedness; the Brahman 
City of Selfhood is an ideal to which the devotee is sur- 
rendered. The same holy abandon pervaded the mind of 
the original Christian, who exalted the moral soul as the 
Brahman had the contemplative self. By means of strident 
contrast between the world and the spirit, the New Testa- 
ment places the soul in a human realm which it calls the 
Kingdom of God. There it is that the soul finds the realiza- 
tion of a value whose counterpart can never be afforded by 
nature, and it is by means of slaying the immediate self in 
nature that man attains to the final self in the Kingdom. 
Here again is a perfect synthesis of human selfhood and 
world-hood. 

Of all the forms of culture, religion is the most daring in 
its pursuit of the world-life. This is consummated by post- 
ulating the unity of finite and infinite. Such a reconciliation 
is impossible where man is left in his natural individuation 
and is not endowed with human selfhood; it is the world- 
life in him which creates a desire for God and further effects 
a communion between them. Religion magnifies man when 
it seeks his redemption, and under its auspices the world of 
humanity assumes a form more steadfast than that contri- 
buted by man's contact with art. Man is taught to seek the 
kingdom of humanity within him; his progress is ever away 
from externality toward the inwardness of his inherent hu- 
manity, which lies concealed beneath animality and rational- 
ity. To perfect such a program, the religious system which 
advocates the culture of Self or the redemption of the soul 
must provide a suitable realm for the spiritual activity in- 
volved in such a humanistic movement. The Bhagavad-Gita 
(vi. 5-6) declares, "He shall by Self, lift up himself, nor let 
himself sink; for a man's self has no friend but Self, no foe 
but Self. The Self is friend to that self that has by self 
conquered self; but self will be a very foe warring against 
him who possesses not his self." And having centered man 
in the Self, it encircles him in an order of being which is 
one with his own nature. So likewise the New Testament, 
which would persuade man to abandon narrow egoism in 
nature for genuine selfhood in the world of humanity. "He 
that findeth his soul — 6 ev/owv rrjv if/vx^v shall lose it: he that 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 65 

loseth his soul — 6 cwroAeVa? ryv tyvxqv shall find it." ( Mt. 
x. 39). Such transmutations of life are impossible apart 
from some second realm in which the emancipated self may 
dwell. 

4 — THE WORLD-LIFE IN HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS 

The complete plan of life, which involves the affirma- 
tion of the soul and constant progress toward humanity, has 
shown somewhat of its influence in the ground of such 
theoretical forms of culture as logic and ethics, in such 
positive ones as art and religion. These four disciplines 
afford indirect evidence of a genuine human order, in which 
all validity and value, all beauty and worship, inhere. Now 
it remains to be asked, whether this same world-life, which 
is premised by the general program of life and postulated by 
particular forms of reflection and action, ever comes to the 
surface of individual consciousness to exert any discernible 
sway. Does man feel that he dwells in the world of human- 
ity ? Does he ever make this world the object of his activity ? 
According to the methods of traditional ethics, these queries 
will sound empty, inasmuch as the empirical self, which has 
instincts and intuitions, and is furnished with maxims about 
happiness and virtue, knows nothing of its place in the world 
of humanity or of the values and dignities which accrue 
therefrom. 

The genius of humanity must disclose itself and induce 
man to make the world his aim. According to Schopen- 
hauer's explanation of genius, the favored individual pos- 
sesses more knowledge than is required for the service of the 
will-to-live, and this excess of cognition in him becomes "a 
clear mirror of the inner nature of the world." (Welt ah 
Wille u. Vorstellung § 36.) This surplus of mental power 
appears in an artist like Michel Angelo, who, according to 
Millet, felt himself to be "overburdened with life." (Smith 
Barbizon Days, p. 42.) Those who are not engrossed in 
sense or ensnared in reason are conscious of the totality of 
the world-order, and upon them, as upon the heads of cary 
atids, rests the whole world of humanity. Apart from a 
sense of man's position in the universe and his place in the 



66 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

plan of humanity, no ethical problem can be justly presented; 
for it is absurd to dictate maxims to man when you have not 
shown him what humanity expects him to do. All desire, 
all duties, all values repose in the one effort on the part of 
spiritual humanity to assert itself as something unified in 
the complete order of being. To adjust man to his human- 
ity, our theory must consider the problem in the light of the 
ego and of society. 

I Humanity and the Individual. While humanity and 
personality are inseparable ideas, all attempts to construe 
man's life in terms of universality are confronted by the 
principle of individuation. The ego asserts itself first; and 
then arises a whole world of persons standing in need of 
both individual and universal treatment. Antiquity develop- 
ed the unity of the world at the expense of the individual; 
modernity perfects the individual but cannot exert the same 
unifying influence over the world. Among our moderns, 
Leibnitz cannot reduce his many monads to a single system, 
while Fichte's individual ego is produced at the expense of 
the world. A reconsideration of the personal problem may 
reveal the fact that the distinction between selfhood and 
worldhood is not as great as the realm of phenomena would 
seem to indicate, and one and the same humanity may exist 
in both the individual and the universe. It may appear 
that the content of humanity is found in the social order, 
the form in the individual one; and it must become manifest 
that, while both ego and alter are involved in the world- 
order of human life, the human relation does not consist in 
any such principle as is commonly involved in the problem 
of egoism and altruism. Traditional ethics has considered 
only the phenomenal forms of ego and society, and it has 
mistaken the empirical for the real. 

On the individualistic side, the empirical ego is not the 
self and cannot be brought into the discussion until some- 
thing like selfhood is appreciated. How naive has man 
been in assuming that immediate experience could give him 
the principle of self, and how absurd his contrast between 
that tiny individuality and the outstanding universe ! Apart 
from a sincere view of selfhood the problem of individual 
and universal cannot be presented, much less solved. Some- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 67 

thing world-like in man is needed to confront the universe. 
The struggle for selfhodd has not failed of recognition in 
the history of humanity. The Veda offers the idea of self- 
hood as its most characteristic contribution to human culture. 
Beginning with the tenth mandala of the Rig-Veda which 
exalts Brahman as the One organized in the Upanishads, 
which regard that One as the Self, and completed in Vedan- 
ta which relates the Self to the Not-Self, Aryan thought 
has not failed to show how far removed from common ex- 
perience is the saving selfhood of humanity. Practical 
Semitic thought as expressed in the New Testament, so 
views the soul that it out- values the universe, and further 
organizes human efforts so that man, by abandoning his false 
selfhood in nature, may rise to true personality in the world 
of spirit. Even the Sophists felt the importance of this 
principle when they made man the measure of being and 
not-being; while, in modern times, Descrates' rationalism 
puts physical and psychological investigation upon the same 
plane. Man is as near universality as individuality; and in 
the act of attaining to selfhood he achieves worldhood. One 
need not adopt an Aryan identification of man with nature, 
or a Semitic superiority of God over the universe in order, 
to place the self in representative relations to the world; 
and whatever be the attitude of critical thought to these 
religious formulations of the self-problem, it must never be 
forgotten that without some spiritual program the idea of 
self, which is not given in experience, cannot be evinced. 

The self which aspires to worldhood is not the isolated, 
unqualified ego who is set off by individuation from his 
fellows, as well as from nature. He is a participant in the 
continuity of human striving, and this adapts him to that one 
world of humanity toward which mankind is approximating. 
Every individual thus contains the totality of the human 
order and, when he is related to history, he is not more than 
one remove from the realm of selfhood which embraces man, 
as nature includes perceptible things. Difficult as may be 
the undertaking which seeks to adjust man to some other 
than a natural order, and paradoxical as some of the posi- 
tions assumed must appear, the philosophic claims inherent 
in the idea of the worldhood of man are not as great as 



68 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

those involved in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 
Indeed, it would seem as though no just pretension to im- 
mortality could be made as long as the soul is left apart 
from an appropriate realm of world-life in mere individua- 
tion. So great is the task which humanity has before it in 
the positing of selfhood that continuity is demanded to fur- 
nish the individual and his age with the means of approxi- 
mating to the goal of human striving. No one person, no 
one stage in human progress can accomplish the object of 
man's universal work; hence a gradual movement in which 
individuals and particular ages participate is demanded by 
man in the accomplishment of his single life-labor. Now 
this continuity of human activity implies a connection among 
the individuals who constitute it, and this connection is 
only another name for the world of humanity. 

Our apology for human individuation must be accom- 
panied by an argument in favor of human history, for both 
the ego and the individual age of history are one remove 
from the world of all human being. From the usual stand- 
point, they appear in a merely empirical way and hence pro- 
duce the paradox of the totality of things given in the form of 
individuality and according to the historical relation. Never- 
theless, humanity is not holden from the intelligible ego of 
the individual or the essential history of the race. How 
shall the history of these individuals be conceived ? First of 
all, it must not be assumed that history exists as a matter of 
course, nor that its content is made up of contingent events. 
A metaphysical view becomes imperative when the reality 
of history is sought. When our proud conception of a 
human world-order is constrasted with human history as 
given in experience, we feel forbidden to assert that this 
phenomenal order of contingencies possesses world-signifi- 
cance. Our conception of the continuity of human striving, 
however, lends to history the category of relation, and, in 
spite of all that is local and arbitrary in the record of human 
action and consciousness, something world-like seems to in- 
vest our human progress. Where history raises man above 
mere individuation, and relates him to past and future and 
the full order of progress, the world itself performs a similar 
service for history and gives it metaphysical status. The 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 69 

office of history is to mediate between the one and the all, 
and thus to set man in» symbolic relation to the universe. 
Where an isolated thinker or actor cannot achieve world- 
hood in himself, he, by relating himself in representative 
fashion to his day, comes into a form of being which is con- 
ceived sine die. The philosopher is not altogether Greek or 
German, the poet is not wholly Italian or Anglican : he is in 
possession of a rich world-life in humanity. 

Among the metaphysical forces which are active in the 
world of persons, there appear deeper springs of action than 
are catalogued in the traditional work on moral philosophy. 
Here is a vigorous affirmation of personality which can spring 
from no other source than the desire to come abreast of the 
human order; there is a sense of suffering which can be 
explained only as we regard it as some form of world- 
sorrow. In Sudermann's "Frau Sorge" this search for soul- 
life is drawn v/ith fidelity and penetrating analysis, and the 
fairy tale appended to the work reveals the motive implicit 
in the earlier pages. When the hero inquires of his mother, 
"Where is my soul ?", she asks the stars for it, but they find 
him too low ; the flowers on the heath, but they call him too 
ugly; the birds of the air, who think him too sad; the tall 
trees, who look upon him as too humble; the clever serpents, 
who consider him too stupid. The hero must free himself, 
and the author can find no device for his emancipation but 
in the committing of crime. By such an exceptional and 
violent method he breaks away from an enslaving moral 
system and becomes himself. 

The same consciousness of one's possession of a human 
soul appears in forms of suffering as well. He who can 
comprehend grief feels it magnified many diameters. With- 
in his soul it produces a peculiar delirium in which the dis- 
tinction between person and person is obliterated, and in his 
anguish he fancies that all share his suffering and are ready 
to run to his relief. Such sorrow creates a certain craving 
for sympathy and the sufferer looks with confidence for 
legions of angels to come to his aid. He cannot believe that 
he is isolated in his individuality and in his grief he sinks 
into the common world of human suffering. It is the acute 
sense of one's own humanity which begets self-commisera- 



7 o VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

tion and makes the individual wonder why he is so sad, 
just as it is omnipresent humanity which gives man his in- 
dividuality. Hence, whatever may be the dialectical solu- 
tion of the problem of individual and universal, the fact 
remains that only in the human order does the individual 
possess a self, and the struggle to realize selfhood results in 
the human attainment of worldhood. Nature, which screens 
the world of humanity from reason, likewise tends to pre- 
vent the development of individuality. When, therefore, 
man becomes himself as self, he begins to participate in the 
one world of humanity. 

2 The World of Persons in Human Consciousness. In 
his social capacity, as one among many in a world of human 
spirits, the individual does not fail to receive further informa- 
tion from that human order which invests him with its own 
life. However individualized humanity may be, the content 
of its life appears in a plural rather than a singular fashion. 
In this way, the importance of the individual receives new re- 
cognition when it is surveyed in the light of the alter or 
non-ego who, in this objective capacity, becomes representa- 
tive of the total world of humanity. Between these separate 
souls yawns the abyss of humanity, whereby we are warned 
that no conventional treatment of egoism-altruism can adapt 
itself to the statement and solution of the problem. Human 
individuals are adapted to one another only as they are 
adjusted to the universe; and instead of the social adjustment 
of person to person, which resembles the physical relation of 
atom to atom, human individuals are made up in human 
fashion according to personal and temperamental variations 
and are related to one another in dramatic fashion. This 
historic view of humanity is not convincing, nevertheless it 
serves to set at nought the purely economic view which has 
so long held sway in ethical calculation. 

With pathetic earnestness our conventional systems have 
sought to relate self to self, and ego to alter, by a casuistical 
play upon prudence and benevolence. Man is expected to 
find his humanity in self-love, to express it in altruistic 
affection. How far removed from such twofold philan- 
thropy is the world of humanity! How degrading is the 
view which, in its exaltation of sympathy, leaves man upon 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 71 

the plane of animality with no suggestion of his human 
culture ! Such sympathy can never penetrate to the recesses 
of self -existence and adjast itself to the infinite needs of the 
other person; and as an impulse on the part of the natural 
man it ignores the fact that all souls are in the same human 
world, where they have the same destiny and are confronted 
by the same problems; hence the bestowal of some immediate 
benefit does not measure up to the merits of the situation. 
He who would do something of worth to mankind must 
premise in the world of persons that same human vocation 
which is active in him in this very altruistic deed. The 
alter is not the conventional character, the moral lay-figure 
of utilitarian ethics, but a characteristic person who has his 
own place in the one world of humanity. For this reason, 
the ambitious altruist is constantly thwarted when he en- 
deavors to contribute something to the unified life of another 
soul. The only argument in favor of benevolence is the 
pessimistic one, which, instead of seeking to discover the 
true world of humanity and its proper values, merely en- 
deavors to repair the actual and untoward condition of 
things with the hope of making empirical life endurable. In 
this guise, benevolence cannot be condemned, although one 
may question the right to raise natural sympathy to the 
rank of moral category. 

The human relation has its place in genuine philosophy. 
One need read only Plato and Aristotle to discover that. 
Plato's idealism finds its source in the erotic which makes 
the dialectic possible. By means of Eros, the soul of man 
is stirred to longing for the ideal which is suggested by the 
sensible forms of things, and it is under the inspiration of 
this same principle that human society is made possible. In 
Plato, therefore, the erotic leads man to knowledge of the 
Idea and unites him with his fellows in an ideal Republic. 
Aristotle treats the human relation in the same fundamental 
fashion when he introduces friendship into the Nicomachean 
ethics, because he believes that the topic is allied with 
virtue just as the "good man" and the "friend" are terms 
not at all dissimilar (Bk. vm. Ch. 1), and friendship and 
justice are considered to have the same subject-matter (lb. 
Ch. ix ). The Aristotlelian conception of friendship is 



72 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

such that it cannot be based upon pleasure or utility; but 
depends upon a mental participation in the Good (Ch. 5). 
Both of these elder masters emphasize the importance of the 
bond between soul and soul and decline to discuss it upon 
any other than a noumenal basis. 

Poetry as well as philosophy gives evidence of this 
metaphysical basis upon which human souls exist and in- 
teract, and the subject of human intercourse becomes drama- 
tic as well as dialectical. Whatever the final solution of 
the drama as a problem may be, and whether with Hegel 
we style it a typical adjustment of finite spirit to the Absolute 
or, with Schopenhauer, look upon it as the relation of indi- 
vidual will to the universal Will to Live ( We It ah Wille u. 
Vorstellung § 51), it cannot be overlooked that the play re- 
presents the individual's relation to the world of humanity, 
wherein the lyrical subject seeks to adapt himself to the epic 
situation. The drama cannot perfect itself upon any narrow 
basis of prudence-benevolence, but must sink deeper and 
evoke the characteristic impulses of the human soul. No 
theory of self-love will account for the acts of the lyrical 
subject who, in the spirit of freedom or overcome by fate, 
seeks to realize personal ambition, surmount difficulties, and 
assert himself as a character. On the other hand, mere 
benevolence or the want of it can never account for malice 
and envy, jealousy and anger and all the varied passions of 
which the dramatist avails himself. Which, then, is human- 
ity; the practical, economic subject who knows but two senti- 
ments: egoism and altruism, or the characteristic person who 
eludes such prosaic classification and exhibits a rich manifold 
of human impulses in the complications of human life? If 
there be something histrionic in the humanity of man, must 
not our ethical systems enrich their classification of human 
impulses and admit of something more than the instincts of 
private and public benevolence? Humanity is to nature as 
the sea is to the land — detached, free, and profound; no 
philosophy of life can measure man unless it surveys him 
sui generis. 

The attitude of man toward his humanity has made it 
possible ror poetry to introduce intents unknown to the pure- 
ly physical view of mankind. In his human capacity, man 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 73 

shows himself to be allied with a separate and sea-like order 
of things, whereby new values enter into the problem of life. 
So aesthetical is his nature that he becomes the subject of 
ideal impulses and ideal feelings; with such the drama ever 
deals in its perpetual play of the unreal. Thus viewed, the 
human subject shows his tendency to act with extra-spon- 
taneity, to feel with hyper-sensitivity; such is his attitude 
toward himself in the world of humanity and the fact of 
ideal suffering and ideal action is a direct evidence that such 
an independent order exists. Were naturism the total of 
man's life there would be no place for these unreal forms of 
activity and passivity. "The beast," says Schiller, "can only 
desire to relieve himself from pain; only man can resolve to 
suffer" {Ueber Anmut und Wurde; Ueber Wiirde), and in a 
more fundamental fashion Schopenhauer has pointed out how 
suffering is essential to man because of the advancement of his 
knowledge; thus he says, "In proportion as knowledge at- 
tains to distinctness, as consciousness ascends, pain also in- 
creases, and accordingly reaches its highest grade in man ; who 
the more clearly he knows and the more intelligent he is, 
the more he suffers; the man of genius suffers most of all." 
(Welt ah Wille u. Vorstellung, § 56.) 

The sublime treatment of the self in the world of human- 
ity is brought about by the subordination of nature to cul- 
ture, of body to mind, whereby passion changes into senti- 
ment and man contemplates his humanity instead of 
calculating his physical pleasures and pains. With a highly 
developed nervous system man pursues pleasure, not merely 
for the sake of bodily satisfaction, but in order to have sheer 
mental enjoyment. We need not accept the philosophy of 
the Veda to see that, as a man's self has no friend but Self, 
no foe but Self, so only in his humanity is man capable of 
either pleasure or pain. The Epicurean creates ideal pleas- 
ures for the sake of ideal enjoyment, while the ascetic in- 
flicts pain upon himself for the sake of an unnecessary form 
of suffering. Extra indulgence which yearns for ideal excite- 
ment, and extra suffering which longs for unreal sources 
of pain, reveal man in his arbitrary humanity as the 
subject of sentimental joy and sorrow. While, by such 
practices, man mistakes his human vocation, and offers a 



74 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

new example of the principle corruptio optimi pessima, he 
does not fail to exhibit a victorious humanity, which wounds 
itself by such morbid practices in the realm of pleasure-pain ; 
so far as the individual is concerned, man seems bent upon 
attaining to consciousness of himself in the world of human- 
ity, which accounts for the ideality of the suffering. 

With the aesthetic treatment of the self goes the rela- 
tion of soul to soul in the human and histrionic order. To 
stolid philosophy, which clings to a naturistic egoism and 
altruism, the peculiar rapport of persons seems suggestive 
of the morbid. Just as the religious ideal of non-resent- 
ment, as proclaimed by Taoism and the Krishna-cult of the 
Bhagavad-Gita, by Buddhism, the Book of Proverbs and 
Christianity, discloses a new order of life beyond the gaze 
of the unenlightened, so dramatic poetry reveals courses of 
action unheard of in the social order of human life. Here 
humanity rules with poetic justice. Common sense cannot 
account for the character of Iago, where humanity appears 
in total perversion; nor can it explain the sorrows of Anti- 
gone in the midst of her inner conflicts. Calderon's "Life 
a Dream" can be read only as the exquisite nature of man is 
the object of our attention. Among moderns, Ibsen has in- 
troduced purely human motives to show, if possible, how and 
why people act as they do. In "The Master Builder" and 
*Hedda Gabler," the aim of the heroines is to sway a 
human soul and mould its destiny; here in an unconscious 
manner which tends toward the good, there in a conscious 
fashion as it is directed toward the bad. The common 
destruction of the heroes involved is brought about in ways 
which are directly opposed. Wagner's romantic opera 
habitually employs this tendency toward soul-swaying in 
the particular form of man's salvation by a member of the 
same human order, in which man is redeemed by sacrifice. 
Hence the Ring des Nibelungen leads humanity from cave 
to mountain and the sky, in the form of dwarfs, giants and 
gods where at the conclusion Brunnhilde all but redeems 
Siegfried. In view of such examples, ethics finds it neces* 
sary to employ some motive more ruling than sympathy if 
humanity is to be explained. 

Such motives and traits characterize those who find their 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 75 

place in the inner world of persons where they live ac- 
cording to individuality rather than conventionality. Our 
modern ethical philosophy has not contemplated man as such 
while it has viewed his human world in mere outline; but 
just as our artists are developing a perspective that is not 
only linear, but aerial and chromatic, our moralists would 
better revise their theories to account for the characteristic 
in human nature. We must appreciate dignity in Raphael's 
art but not overlook the vitality of Velasquez. Man may 
not live to himself, but he does live to his humaniy and being 
suffused with human atmosphere, he must be surveyed in an 
impressionistic manner. Our views of humanity have gone 
from rationality to utility without concerning themselves 
about genuine human interests. Man desires neither the 
abstract nor the concrete; his humanity inclines him toward 
the intuitive. For this reason, we must not look for the 
realization of life in conduct apart from its idealization in 
theory, for every one feels that he is not only doing a work 
but playing a part, so that all humanity has a touch of the 
histrionic in it. Men were meant to be men, not monks 
or merchants, and the theory that enjoins mere duties and 
utilities overlooks the warm humanity of man. 

Our own ethical theory must seek to account for man as 
well as for the partial and prejudiced views of his nature; 
as a result there will appear three characteristic views of 
life in the world. By means of his spiritual self-assertion, 
the continuity of his striving, and the approximation to his 
human order, man has developed certain types of conduct. 
First in order comes a period of naturistic being, where 
reason is submerged in sense and spirituality prevented by 
animality. Then follows an order of being in which reason 
and spirit become independent and turn against the world 
whose external nature seems so alien to the internal needs of 
the soul. Where the first view of life upholds immediacy 
and sense, the second emphasizes remoteness and rationality. 
Finally, man settles down to the inner realization of his 
humanity, and gives up the idea that he can be wholly 
animal or wholly spiritual. Then, as if for the first time, 
he sees the meaning of his inner selfhood and outer world- 
hood, and thereby learns what to expect of both himself 



76 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and nature. Traces of these earlier forms of life still cling 
to him, however, and he finds it imperative to participate 
in the life of sense as well as the life of reason. These 
phases of human life that accrue from the progress of human- 
ity toward self-realization may be styled, (i) Naturistic, (2) 
Characteristic, (3) Humanistic. From the Sankhya philo- 
sophy to Schiller, these types have been recognized, and it 
requires only careful adjustment of them to the inner essence 
and outer realization of life to place the problem of humanity 
in a proper light. 



PART TWO 
THE NATURISTIC VIEW OF LIFE 



I 

THE LIFE OF HUMANITY IN SENSE 

I — THE FIRST STAGE OF MANKIND 

The general consideration of human life, which has been 
laid down as the groundwork of this ethical theory, provides 
for an original type of living in the form of naturism. What 
was then a course of conduct on the part of the primitive 
man is now a form of consciousness in the mind of the man 
of culture. No sensible person could ever imagine that the 
life of man could be conducted in disregard of naturistic 
interest, and with the Gentiles we must inquire concerning 
our food and drink, our clothing and shelter. Yet he who 
is alive to the essential naturism of our human existence is 
called upon further to recognize how relative is this con- 
sideration; nature is a part of man's life, but only a part. 
That which produced man constantly fosters the genius of 
humanity within him, for it is by means of this enveloping 
medium that his science arranges phenomena according to a 
human, or mental, plan; while art selects and adjusts them 
in accordance with the principles of taste. From the example 
of this scientiflco-aesthetic deed, it is plain that man, who 
clings to his environment, is determined to transform it in 
accordance with human principles of judgment, and while 
man is ever naturistic, he is none the less humanistic. The 
full history of mankind makes provision for this early pre- 
paratory stage of spiritual life. The Tamas-Guna or 
gloomy quality of matter in the Sankhya and the hylical 
order of Gnosticism, Plato's group of artisans and Vice's 
stage of nature-peoples are classic examples of this begin- 
ning. 

The adjustment of humanity to nature, which should 
be of obvious import, requires considerable discussion, inas- 
much as our minor moral theories have never surveyed hu- 

79 



80 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

man life in its totality. Both hedonism and intuitionism are 
wanting in genuine philosophic spirit, since one has failed 
to look forward to consider the goal of human existence, 
while the other has similarly refused to survey its ground in 
the world of nature. As a problem, life must be surveyed 
both a fronte and a tergo. Nature may well be left to itself 
for the best and the worst that can be said about it is that 
it is only primitive in form and influential in character. To 
relate nature to life, thought must regard it as fundamental 
but not final, for a period in human existence which knows 
neither culture within nor civilization without, while it is 
indispensable in human life, is not the sum total of human 
striving. There is thus a genuine view of naturistic ethics 
which looks upon pleasure as something preparatory, and a 
spurious one which so dignifies simple feeling that it uses all 
its powers to negate it for the sake of abstract virtue. Na- 
ture is neither the friend nor the foe of humanity, which is 
related to it in a fashion temporary and incidental. To ap- 
preciate nature in human life, we must survey the origin 
and development of morality. Apart from the totality of 
human existence, this double question admits of no satis- 
factory discussion. Hedonism loses sight of ethical per- 
manence and fails to deduce any moral category; rigorism 
is blind to moral progress and cannot invest life with any 
content. The view of life as humanistic has in mind such 
a vast plan for humanity that the rise, development, and cul- 
mination of the ethical is capable of easy adjustment to the 
problem of progress. 

The idea of progress is by no means an ordinary one and 
seems to stand in need of a justification of its own. Where 
Aristotle worked with the assumption that culture was 
complete so that no advancement was necessary, the Stoics 
suggested the idea of progress with their term irtpiKvirri 
Leibnitz uses the word Forttrieb, the eighteenth century pro- 
duces Fortschritt and Fortgangj terms which are associated 
with Tetens and Herder respectively (Eucken, Gesch. d. 
philos. Terminol, S. 136, 169). If, in opposition to the 
rationalistic view, we can accustom ourselves to the idea that 
morality arose as something which had not existed before ; and 
if we can look upon that origin as a genuine humanism, and 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 81 

not a masked hedonism, we shall have accomplished enough 
to place the ethical problem in a proper light. Morality has 
had a beginning; it arose in accordance with a demand on 
the part of humanity which was already striving with na- 
ture. Whether morality was introduced by religion or not, 
it has not always been in the world, but arose when man 
began to reflect upon the different values which the inner and 
the outer represented to him. 

2 — THE ORIGIN OF MORAL LIFE 

Two hindrances obstruct the pathway back to the 
source of man's moral being. One is a scientific difficulty 
due to want of satisfactory data concerning the subject 
itself; the other is a sentimental one which involves the in- 
vestigator who hesitates to disclose the root of moral activi- 
ty. This antipathy to psycho-genesis is a modern mood 
which stands in need of patient treatment. Thus the 
origins of art and religion, of science and morality, are not 
the most welcome ideas in idealistic philosophy, for deep 
and miry seems the pit whence they are dug. We will 
examine the ground in human thought, but not the origin 
in human consciousness, for we have a prejudice against 
social evolution which is comparable to the antipathy to poli- 
tical history for which the Enlightenment was unfortunately 
so famous. Yet the origin was there and it demands re- 
cognition. 

Apart from any particular theory of morality and its 
origin, we may assume that the ethical life has not been 
without a career, which has been marked by progress from 
lower to higher, or from nature to spirit. It is not so much 
the history of actual morality, which cannot be viewed in the 
same light as the obvious history of law, religion, and art, 
but the successive estimates that man has placed upon his 
life, that affords us material for discussion. When the 
actual world of humanity changes from sheer naturism to 
an artificial civilization, when art, law, and worship ascend 
from the primitive to the perfect, it is to be expected that 
man's sentiments will vary accordingly. Ethical thought 
must be seized in a dynamic fashion, inasmuch as the life of 



82 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

man obeys some law of change; and to ignore the progres- 
sive moment in human life is to ignore life itself. To return 
to nature is a genial suggestion, which does not fail to in- 
dicate that man has long since left his immediate life behind 
him; but more in the spirit of progressive nature is it to 
proclaim, "Let us advance to our humanity." 

Man is evidently bent upon asserting his humanity, for 
he aspires to be a person, not a thing, and nature does not 
furnish him with instincts of selfhood, nor does it provide 
him with a fit situation for the display of his human activi- 
ties. Even the man of nature will be a person, which is at 
least one remove from animality. Locomotion distinguishes 
animal from plant; self-assertion separates man from the 
brute. Nevertheless, it is only a false and negative asser- 
tion of individuality which obtains upon the plane of nature, 
and its value for the emancipation of an earth-bound human- 
ity is merely suggestive, inasmuch as it indicates a purpose 
and a power unconceived and misapplied. 

It is the destiny of man to strive, and no space-filling, 
time-occupying, force-exerting ideal of the physical may 
apply to him. Upon the naturistic level, this conative at- 
titude of the individual appears in the forms of "will to 
live," "struggle for existence," "being one's self." With 
plant and animal, man shares these primal impulses, but 
humanity means more than vitality. Man struggles for 
something more than the self-preservation of his existence; 
his will soars above the stage of mere living, and the develop- 
ment of a world of culture demonstrates the fact that life 
and existence upon earth are not sufficient for the human 
spirit. The struggle is for spiritual life, not mere being; 
the will-to-live does not end with the fact of life but ascends 
to the higher form of the will-to-well-being, to beauty, to 
knowledge. Earth-born is not earth-bound, and a creature 
of nature need not hesitate to approach the domain of spirit. 
When this vitalistic conception of man is entertained, it is 
not so difficult to account for the origin and growth of 
morality. If the good were a concept established by ab- 
stract thinking, it would describe a circle excluding the ac- 
tivities of the primitive man; then it would be well nigh 
impossible to interpret his raw self-assertion as a moral 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 83 

impulse. Where we do not assume the static point of view, 
but claim that morality stands for a progressive condition, 
naturism may stand for primitive morality, indeed as the 
very beginning of ethical doing. 

To obtain the benefits of naturism, philosophy must 
esteem the primitive state sound and deficient only in range. 
Any other view such as that of Kant, who looks upon natural 
affection as though it were "pathological," will find it diffi- 
cult to explain how mankind has made its progress. It is 
quite true that progress is a novelty, even in modern philo- 
sophy and where it was unknown in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, it is not adequately valued in the nine- 
teenth and twentieth. Nevertheless, progress is a category 
which possesses the understanding of man, and the idea of 
human moral development is one that cannot be escaped. 

We shrink from the idea of development in morality, 
because it suggests, not the progressive, but the regressive. 
Goodness must stand alone in ethical isolation, exhibiting 
no likeness to things in the earth; such is the usual scruple 
of the moralist who follows traditional intuitionism. Yet in 
the parallel cases of beauty and truth, we are not so sus- 
picious of nature. Granted that aesthetical theory is finally 
able to postulate an ideal of beauty which, in all its univer- 
sality and necessity shall be free from the particular in 
nature and from the partial or interested in man; yet that 
intuition of beauty were impossible if man could not feel 
pleasure. Knowledge even more than art may insist upon 
pure principles of self-evident and all-sufficient truth, yet 
such knowledge traces back to something given in sensation. 
It is thus expected that feeling should originate beauty and 
taste, that sensation should end in thought and knowledge; 
why then should we hesitate to lay bare the root of good- 
ness? "Duty," exclaims Kant, "what origin is there worthy 
of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble 
descent?" Yet this same Kant did not hesitate to relate 
truth to the forms of sense, and beauty to the principles 
of feeling. 



84 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

3 THE POSSIBILITY OF MORAL PROGRESS 

In the current condition of ethical theory, it seems im- 
possible to survey the progressive plan of humanity in a 
satisfactory manner. By its very nature, hedonism is pledged 
to the relative in morals, inasmuch as it reverses the virtue, 
not for its own sake, but by reason of its eudaemonic tend- 
ency. Hence, when the conditions of existence change, the 
estimate of virtue varies accordingly. Intuitionism is similar- 
ly surrendered to a metaphysical view, but one the very 
reverse of hedonic relativism; the theory which regards vir- 
tue as final looks upon its form as fixed in immutability. 
That which was an academic quarrel within the systems of 
Hobbes and Cudworth-Clarke, is still a form of dispute 
between evolutionists and rationalists. With neither view 
can one sympathize altogether, since each has something 
eccentric about it. When the central motive of humanity 
is made the point of departure, moral progress as such as- 
sumes its proper place and presents no such crabbed question 
as now disturbs our attempts to. measure man's work in the 
world. Neither change nor changelessness is convincing in 
moral matters, which view the value of human experiences, 
and when the plan of humanity is made the standard of 
moral judgment, and man's immediate motives are judged 
in the light of what humanity is attempting to do, ethical 
progress in both deed and consciousness will be an aid 
rather than hindrance to the theory of life. By means of 
progress man realizes himself as human, and were it not for 
this plan, which is peculiar to humanity, all visible reality 
would have remained upon the plane of mere nature. 

Having found humanity to be continuous in its striving 
toward realization, the particular view of the ethical life can 
do no better than adopt the progressive plan in describing 
virtues and aligning values. However deferential toward 
virtue one may be, he cannot close his eyes to the struggle 
which man has undergone to perfect it ; and bright as it may 
appear to-day, in an age of conscious culture and alert 
civilization, it arose as no day-spring unanticipated in the 
preliminary efforts of primitive man. Those who system- 
atize a nation's morals do not originate new ideals but simply 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 85 

restate traditions in a philosophical form which gives them 
apparent self-sufficiency. * Such was the work of Confucius 
among the Chinese, Vyasa among the Hindoos, Zoroaster 
among Iranians in the east, Hebrew prophets and Grecian 
philosophers who so influenced subsequent thought in the 
west. Among the ancient Chinese, for example, Laotze ar- 
ranges the various orders of life in suggestive succession; 
hence the Tao-Teh-King (Ch. 18-19), reviewing the ideals 
of a primitive and paradisical age, points to the "decay of 
manners," and adds a counsel to "return to the unadulter- 
ated influence." In keeping with this, the practical is set 
at variance with the perfect, when (Part 11. Chapter 38) 
the Teh is constrasted with the Tao. "Thus it was when 
the Tao was lost, its attributes appeared ; when its attributes 
were lost, benevolence appeared; when benevolence was lost, 
righteousness appeared; and when righteousness was lost, 
the proprieties appeared." In the midst of this melancholy 
descent, we may observe three stages which above all others 
are like those of our own plan of history, namely: righteous- 
ness, benevolence, and the ideal, or Tao. 

If we reverse this plan and make other changes to render 
the whole scheme consonant with our western methods, we 
may receive a suggestion in keeping with our own surmise 
concerning the fortunes of the life-ideal. The desire for 
life and happiness becomes a desire for virtue ; the pursuit of 
virtue is based upon the value of the ethical life. Naturism 
is changed into rationalism, while rationalism mellows into 
humanism, which preserves the content of the first period 
and the form of the second. This is the inner truth con- 
tained in the Gunas of Kapila, the classes of Plato, the three 
sorts of Gnostic men, the sensuous, heroic and human ages of 
mankind outlined by Vico. Nature is the beginning, human- 
ity the end of mankind, while reason is the means employed 
in effecting the transmutation. 

The immediacy which marked the primitive condition of 
the human race precludes the thought that mankind began 
its career under the banner of an idealistic system of moral- 
ity. For Socrates and Kant, each with memorials of a great 
age of civilization behind him, it is not difficult to lay down 
autonomous rules of rational, ethical conduct; but the man 



86 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

who has just begun to assume the human burden must make 
a simpler initiative. Ideal activity and spiritual culture are 
not primitive, and the man who has not yet attained to 
them must live such a life as his environment makes possible. 
The guide of life is stern necessity which has not yet as- 
sumed the force of a conscience or moral imperative, fit to 
govern the whole world. It is only an advanced stage of 
human culture which conceives of the soul as a unity and the 
world in its totality, and why should we look to naturism 
for the principles of intuitional ethics ? We cannot say with 
Hobbes that, in the state of nature, nothing is either com- 
manded or forbidden, although we may assume that the 
primitive commandment involved no autonomous sanction 
for conduct. 

Primitive conduct was instinctive, not intuitive; that is, 
it was in accordance with the needs of sense, not in harmony 
with the ideals of reason. Let it be granted that there is a 
difficulty encountered when our thought seeks to pass from 
utility to virtue, but this same hesitation is felt when a sen- 
sation is to become an idea. Indeed, all idealism, which seeks 
to transfigure the facts of experience that they may detach 
themselves from the world of sense, is obliged to surmount 
this hindrance ; and the question concerning the growth of the 
ethical ideal is only an acute form of the common human 
predicament. In the particular case of the ethical, some 
relief may be found in the thought that man, the subject for 
whose sake moral laws were originally instituted, himself 
is and was then conceived of as possessing an intrinsic value, 
and although only his animal nature was served by the crude 
ethical virtue, he was thereby enabled to realize himself as 
human and spiritual. Even in the rare atmosphere of 
Christianity, the duties of feeding and clothing are not dis- 
regarded, but are rather put upon the highest plane of saint- 
hood. In this way a purely natural good, which with a 
lower animal would serve only a physical purpose, is raised 
to ethical significance; and with virtues like justice and bene- 
volence, the realization of the moral values involved can be 
expressed only in terms of immediate physical benefit. Man 
is necessarily human. The skeptical Xenophanes urged that 
had the horse, lion and ox hands, they would fashion images 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 87 

of their deities in their own likenesses ; while the witty Aesop 
makes the lion suggest tjiat had he been the sculptor, he 
would have made the statue represent the lion conquering 
Hercules. Nevertheless, the eternally human is inevitable 
and as long as man is adjusted to nature and spirit as the 
poles of his being, his humanism will never mislead or wound 
him. 

4— THE ENTRANCE OF IDEALISM 

Meanwhile, in the midst of an experience which has not 
yet become empirical, the primitive man shows himself cap- 
able of idealistic aims. His is an age when myth and poem 
find that expression which can come only from contact with 
nature; to return to it later times must renounce their ac- 
quired knowledge and resume a forgotten naturism if they 
are to be artistic. The crass satisfactions after which the 
Gentiles sought, show how an age far advanced beyond its 
nature-condition cannot accustom itself to a higher life, 
while the ideal desires of primitive peoples show how serene- 
ly children of earth may anticipate the dawn of a spiritual 
age. Humanism at its height cannot forego the desire to 
rehabilitate nature, and the farther man is removed from his 
animality, the more perfect is his approach to the spirit of 
the world. Such a consciousness as this led Schiller, in his 
essay on "Naive and Sentimental Poetry," to assert, "The 
antique poet was nature; the modern merely seeks her." 

The uncultivated man continually reveals the possibility, 
but only the possibility, of a non-empirical life. Poetry 
precedes prose; religion comes before science, and myth be- 
fore history. Love of ceremony, desire for play, which 
mark the career of the nature-man, reveal the same impulse 
to raise his being above his surroundings; and the beginnings 
of art and religion inaugurate the procession toward the life 
human. Therefore, to consider the man of nature a coarse 
utilitarian, is to ignore the testimony of both beauty and 
worship, just as it is to invest the naive mind with a con- 
tent which could only arise in an age of science and industry 
like our own. 

The poetical temperament of the uncultured man, as 
well as his superstitious nature, made possible the transition 



88 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

to a higher form of mental and moral life. Sense, which 
surrounds man, does not wholly envelop his being, and in the 
midst of naturism there is still the possibility of abstract 
consideration; though not yet himself, man has risen above 
the limits of mere hedonism. Psychologically viewed, the 
mind manifests a conflict between sensation and ideation, so 
that the primitive man cannot fail to distinguish between 
the immediate external impression and its inner counter- 
part. Between their merits he may then decide. The in- 
fluence of dreams, the whole range of spiritism in nature- 
peoples, show how impossible it is for purely empirical con- 
siderations to fetter the growing mind. Nature cannot con- 
tain man, even when he is little better than an earth-born 
creature; in his very weakness, he is able to transcend his 
immediacy, just as his instincts allow him to rise above 
animality. 

In the long process of humanizing man, the constant 
element is life, whose value is realized in appropriate ways 
upon the several stages of mankind's development. The 
man of nature can perceive the good and bad effects of acts 
which at a more advanced period will be called virtue and 
vice, but he will do so without relating these to the total 
issue of human life. But as society becomes more and more 
complex and its essence more internal, the immediate in- 
terest in conduct becomes subordinate to the ultimate pur- 
pose of mankind's existence. A practical utility, which con- 
nects itself with man's immediate life cannot stand for the 
life-ideal, inasmuch as man is destined to detach himself 
from nature and elaborate a form of conduct peculiar to 
himself. Hedonism can never be humanism. Yet the same 
argument which is directed against an earth-bound good in 
the form of pleasure may be turned against rigorism, which 
insists upon an isolated ideal in the form of self-styled virtue, 
to be followed for its own sake. The dangerous element 
involved herein consists in not reckoning with man, who is 
necessitated to live his life in a human way. Rigorism re- 
jects the idea of origin, and protests against a time-serving 
utilirianism ; and rigorism is unwilling to consider the goal 
of life and urge the good because of its value for humanity. 
Its autonomy is so misleading that the teleological import of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 89 

life is lost, and discredit is thrown upon the love of virtue. 
When the theory learns from naturism to hold fast to the life- 
interest, and accepts from rationalism the suggestion that 
such an interest must never be an immediate one, the way 
is prepared for a view which shall reconcile these extremes, 
and end a time-honored conflict. 

As for nature, her function is best understood in the 
light of possibility rather than necessity, as promise rather 
than performance. The earthly life of man is neither to be 
praised nor blamed, but made use of for a higher purpose; 
when this is done a new life begins for man — incipit vita 
nova. The excess or overflow of nature is humanity. 
Matter is less than the physical universe; reality is greater 
than the cosmos; hence the possibility of cosmology and on- 
tology. In the larger world there is room for both physical 
and ethical views of mankind. Mere naturism may be led 
to say, "We are creatures of earth, after all;" the spirit in 
man rejoins, "But something akin to the sea and the sky." 
And it is this restless, upward-striving tendency which leads 
us to express the conviction that man has an ethical destiny. 

Humanity can never be wholly hedonic; the very fact 
that the pleasure is man's pleasure, that the pain is man's 
pain changes a merely psychic experience into something 
whose value is estimated in terms of a world-life. Upon the 
basis of such simple feeling, humanity judges conduct and 
sets a total estimate upon the world of life in optimistic or 
pessimistic theory. Further, the human feeling constantly 
passes over from the bodily form of passion to the mental 
form of sentiment, and man is persuaded to pursue aesthetic 
feelings which have only an ideational existence. Humanity 
is safe in the hands of primitive man who is no more sub- 
merged by utilitarianism than is the man of the present with 
his mechanical science and industrial ideals. Dreams and 
fancies, myths and traditions, however crude they may be, 
reveal the fact that as poetry is primitive, so the early man 
is ideational in his mental life. When humanity is called 
upon to arise in nature it is permitted to pass on to some- 
thing more in keeping with its spiritual nature. 

It is the implicit humanity in man which makes him 
trustworthy even when upon the naturistic level, and for 



S>o VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

this reason we are enabled to adopt a consistent attitude 
toward the primitive form of moral life. Were ethics re- 
duced to a sharp either — or, and the terms of the disjunction 
included hedonism and rigorism, we should find ourselves in 
the usual predicament of the moralist who must decide 
against either his body or his mind. But the plan which 
humanity has arranged for mankind suffers us to regard 
naturism as something temporary, although by means of this 
contact with the world man acquires certain interests which 
never abandon him. The scientific order which phenomena 
follow, and the aesthetic interpretation of which they are 
capable, reveal the relative value of the natural order, and 
no ethical theory which aims to explain man and to justify 
his ideals can afford to treat nature cavalierly. This does 
not mean that man is to subordinate himself to an order of 
being which cannot contain him, or to subsume his nature to 
a phase of reality so ill-equipped with the marks necessary to 
define him. Nature, which, in connection with the body, 
gives man feeling and consciousness, is through with man 
when in the exercise of judgment he elaborates forms for his 
thought and values for his life. Pure cognition and culture 
are not attributes of the material organization with which 
nature prepares humanity for life. 

In itself, the naturistic system of ethics is used to explain 
how living morality began, just as it is further advanced as 
an ideal for life to-day. Thus viewed, it is supposed to satis- 
fy the intellect, which has a certain curiosity about the course 
which humanity has pursued, as also to content his striving 
will. In the first instance it succeeds in depicting the 
program of primitive life, for its obvious principles are finely 
adapted to the needs and aims experienced by nature-peoples ; 
but beyond this point of view of reminiscence, its powers 
hardly extend, since the man of inner culture and artificial 
civilization has so departed from nature as to make its ideals 
invalid. True it is that naturistic elements will ever sur- 
vive, since man's change of interest does not effect any 
change of metaphysical position, and, forever shut in by 
temporo-spatial limits, humanity will not cease to enjoy and 
to display a certain trait of earth-life. It is only when 
philosophy attempts to transform the scaffolding into the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 91 

structure that criticism points out the peril of the view enter- 
tained; then it appears that nature is not culture, that 
hedonism is not humanism. 

The inherent claims of naturistic ethics cannot be dis- 
patched briefly, and even the most thorough-going form of 
criticism cannot hope to withdraw man from nature. Two 
general forms of theorizing have ever characterized man's 
reaction upon his experience, and in two distinct moods he 
has inquired concerning the value of his life in nature. The 
first of these consists of a hedonism, which is engrossed with 
the content of naturistic life as this is given in the feelings 
of pleasure and pain; the second reveals a eudaemonism, 
which is centered upon the form of man's original life as 
this is found in immediacy of contact with nature, and real- 
ized in a course of natural activity. Where one tries to re- 
present human happiness as consisting in the passive recep- 
tion of pleasure, the other attempts to explain this by an 
appeal to the active pursuit of natural interests. The two 
are united by a common faith in the natural order, as well 
as by a single fear of departing from the domain of im- 
mediate interest, and in general they counsel man to forego 
the ideal while he strives to content and to perfect himself 
in the world of given forms. 



II 

THE FEELING OF HUMANITY IN PLEASURE 
AND DESIRE 

For the preliminary form of the naturistic doctrine of 
life no better term can be found than that of hedonism, 
which expresses the sense of man's immediate life in the 
world. While the term is not the most inclusive one, it 
keeps before our minds the fact that such a naturistic content 
is definable in terms of pleasure-pain only. At the same 
time, the program of the school cannot long continue upon 
this limited basis, and further conceptions enter to qualify 
the source of moral life in nature, as also to extend its sway. 
As nature cannot quite contain overflowing humanity, so 
hedonism fails to account for the operations of human 
nature, even when upon the lowest plane of activity. The 
first conflict which engages the attention of the hedonist is 
one which concerns the very source of the principle, for it 
appears at the outset that passive feeling cannot account 
for active humanity, whose nature is more consistently ex- 
pressed in terms of desire. The adoption of such an active 
principle carries hedonism forward with unexpected strength 
and rapidity, so that the hedonic subject is soon found striv- 
ing for human selfhood and worldhood. The division of 
interest involved in this conflict raises man above mere 
nature, for the claims of ego and alter have to be settled in 
a higher court than naturism can institute. Hence results 
an appeal to an ethical principle as such, and the conflict with 
altruism involves the admission of a moralism. Such is the 
course of the hedonic argument. 

I — LIFE ACCORDING TO PLEASURE-PAIN 

The attempt to account for human conduct as the pur- 
suit of pleasure is the ideal which lies at the heart of pure 

92 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 93 

hedonism. To realize this it avails itself of a mental process 
which stands out in arrfazing prominence among a host of 
other conscious concerns, and in the beginning the hedonic 
theory succeeds in carrying off the human soul. In the 
totality of human consciousness, the strategic position oc- 
cupied by pleasure is comparable only to the analogous place 
of the quality of sweetness among sensations. In all prob- 
ability, there is some explanation for the fact that the sensa- 
tion of sweetness interests us more than such qualities as 
sourness, saltiness, redness, blueness, etc.; for there is no 
inherent reason why such an ordinary sensation should in- 
vade our sensational consciousness and extend its sway over 
into the domain of affection, so that to be sweet is an ex- 
pression almost equivalent to being pleasant. This is like- 
wise the extraordinary condition of things present in the 
feeling of pleasure, which seems to mean more to us than 
either clear cognition or vigorous volition. In the face of 
pleasure man can never be quite himself, for his interests 
are warped in the direction of the absorbing hedonic pro- 
cess. Hedonism assumes that pleasure is real in itself and 
realizable in experience, so that the moral subject has only 
to choose what is fit and the feliciflc ideal will be attained. 

Without consulting humanity as to its proposed treat- 
ment of man, the theory is conceived in naivete and soon 
ends in hopeless dogmatism; therefore, it becomes difficult to 
present the question which inquires whether man is actually 
seeking pleasure, or whether his life in humanity consists of 
happiness. Sensations of sweetness and feelings of pleasure 
are liable to throw the introspective apparatus off its center, 
with the result of producing bad psychology and worse ethics ; 
and we may wonder whether, after all, we shall find the 
genuine sense of humanity lurking behind these excessively 
interesting experiences. We identify a man by his profes- 
sion, although the public often measures him according to 
his pastimes; so in the hedonic atmosphere, we shall try 
to discover how man conducts his total life, however difficult 
it may be to pursue such ephemeral objects as human pleas- 
ures. 

What at the outset seems so obvious as the pleasures of 
men soon becomes a baffling probelm. We hardly recognize 



94 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the genuine man in his holiday attire. Man is striving with 
nature in order to realize himself as a human being, while 
he is constantly undergoing suffering with the result of ap- 
preciating humanity. How shall we follow the particular 
activities of his character when he assumes the role of a 
hedonic hero who seeks self-realization in passing pleasure 
and immediate happiness? Hedonistic psychology is not 
sufficient unto these demands, and it fails to account for man 
as a mere pleasure-seeker, who really acts with a secret 
motive; for in his search for happiness he cannot hide the 
freedom of his feelings or that larger liberty which is pos- 
sessed by the human spirit. It is man who seeks enjoyment 
— Vhomme s'amuse. The hedonic theory has claimed hap- 
piness for man without inquiring whether man can contain 
it; nor has it waited to investigate the eudaemonistic ques- 
tion concerning the nature of happiness. Both humanity and 
happiness are ideas which need to be clarified. 

When the hedonic argument is carefully stated, its lead- 
ing principles probably cannot be denied validity, however 
subordinate to the general trend of life they may be. It is 
customary to advance the contrary theory of rigorism as the 
cure for hedonism, although it is not necessary to run this 
risk of failure to correct a theory so insufficient as a repre- 
sentative of naturism. Naive naturalism is forever opposed 
to a rationalism which employs the hedonic "calculus" and 
the utilitarian "demonstration." 

From the standpoint of nature, it will appear that pleas- 
ure is not the organic impulse in human nature. Yet in 
this way has historical hedonism committed itself. "Nature," 
said Bentham, "has placed mankind under the governance 
of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure." (Prin. of 
Morals and Legislation, Ch. I .) Before him, Hume had 
pledged humanity to hedonism by saying: "The chief spring 
or actuating principle of the human mind is pleasure or pain ; 
and when these sensations are removed, both from our 
thought and feeling, we are, in a great measure, incapable of 
passion or action, of desire or volition." (Treatise of 
Human Nature, m. 3, I.) This is not true, as history 
and experience show: nature has not abdicated in favor of 
feeling; human nature has not resigned at the request of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 95 

some of its subordinates. In urging its claims, hedonism 
argues in the same circle, which is to ensnare rigorism. We 
are not happy, because we are pleased; we do not perform 
duty, because we ought. 

Such flat hedonism can make no headway in discoursing 
upon human nature, for it considers man apart from the 
animating principle of his human life. In the ceaseless 
struggle for humanity and the deathless interests which are 
involved therein, the prominence of pleasure constitutes a 
serious question. Parallel to the mystery of pain, whereby 
we wonder why we are ever called upon to suffer, is the 
mystery of pleasure which falsely persuades man that the 
total interest of his life consists in avoiding pain and in 
enjoying pleasure. On this subject, man is inflicted with 
hyperaesthesia, and it is only because subjective feeling is 
magnified far beyond the range of either cognition or activity 
that a hedonic view of life is able to present a plausible 
argument. True it is that man can pursue pain as a desir- 
able end, but the majority of mankind are convinced that 
pleasure possesses an intrinstic value, and it is with difficulty 
that such an optimistic illusion is dispelled. Man is so con- 
stituted that the process of feeling is the invariable 
concomitant of action, and the prominence which pleasure 
and pain occupy leads man to regard them as magisterial. 
Life cannot go on without feeling, nor can it go on without 
breathing. But the end of life consists in neither affection 
nor respiration. 

Upon strictly hedonistic grounds, the quality of feeling 
cannot be affirmed in distinction from quantity, and it is 
elsewhere that relief must be sought. The calculating per- 
son who balances pleasure with pleasure, and pain with pain, 
has only a quantitative hedonometer, and qualitative analysis 
involves further considerations. These appear when feeling 
is freed from will and intellect and regarded as an affair of 
taste or preference; also, when the totality of human life is 
weighed against the entirety of nature, and man adapted to 
his human vocation. The hedonic man, who seeks to weigh 
earth-bound joys against one another, is vastly different from 
the human man who, in all the freedom of feeling, affirms 
his being in independence of his habitat. Mill was right in 



96 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

affirming the possibility of a qualitative hedonism, but his 
utilitarian system does not enable him to see the fruition of 
this hope, and to all intents no advance was made beyond 
usual hedonism. The qualitative view depends for its con- 
ception upon a qualitative distinction between humanity and 
nature, and this advance is one which the hedonist is not 
prepared to make. 

Pleasure — pain, not feeling itself, has been the funda- 
mental tone of the hedonic scheme. Feeling alone, even 
when viewed in a more penetrating light, is lacking in force 
and direction; it is essentially passive and unintelligent. To 
sway man for good or bad, feeling stands in need of idea, 
toward which the subject may urge himself; otherwise he is 
blind in his conduct, and cannot attain either to hedonism or 
moralism. The want of an hedonic goal is appreciated by 
the second and third types of naturism: utilitarianism and 
social evolution, one of which proposes the ideal of "greatest 
happiness," the other that of "most perfect health." Both 
confess the resultlessness of a pure hedonism, which cannot 
escape from its own subjectivism; both indicate how necessary 
it is for man to depart from his native immediacy and assert 
some kind of humanity, whether of a political or social 
nature. Yet all three forms of naturism are blind to the 
fact that man's human life advances by stages, of which that 
of nature is but preparatory; oblivious also of the thought 
that the emancipation of the human spirit is effected by some 
mightier and centrifugal impulse than the desire for pleasure. 
Such is the anti-climax to which hedonism leads. 

2 — THE HEDONIC CALCULUS 

In the midst of this general assumption that, in his hu- 
manity, man is purely hedonic, there appears a particular 
method which enables him to perfect himself as a creature 
destined for happiness. Wanting in the early forms of 
hedonism and abandoned by the latter ones, there is found in 
Bentham's school a special hedonic calculus, which seeks to 
determine right and wrong, not immediately upon the basis 
of either intuition or instinct, but upon the basis of a mathe- 
matical method, quite in keeping with the quantitative form 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 97 

of the hedonic doctrine. Bentham analyzed pleasure in such 
a way as to bring out some seven attributes — intensity, dura- 
tion, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, extent — .upon 
the basis of which the hedonic subject was supposed to sum 
up the tendencies of the act under question and, by striking a 
balance, decide upon its moral merit. (Principles of Morals, 
Ch. iv ). But a man of living instincts is no more likely to 
determine his conduct by repeating, 

"Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure — 

Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure," 
than the man of clear perception is to guide his mind to 
truth by repeating, 

"Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque prioris; 

Cesare, Camestres, Festino Baroko, secundae" 
The sound naturism of man, which unites him with the 
genuine order of things, and makes it possible for him to 
participate in the program of his own nature, renders the 
calculus of feeling useless. Man in his striving and suffering 
cannot make use of such artificial calculations. 

The familiar rebuttal of such a mechanical summation of 
pleasures consists of the application of those mental func- 
tions which usually carry on mental syntheses, but which for 
some inscrutable reason are inactive within the felicific field. 
And thus it comes about that where a mechanical summa- 
tion of things is possible upon a natural basis where one 
deals, for example, with coins, books, and the like, it has 
no place in a psychic realm of liquid experiences. In the 
elaboration of a concept, the necessary elements are identified 
by means of abstraction and then united through generaliza- 
tion. Behind the logical process of abstraction stands at- 
tention, while memory makes possible the act of generaliza- 
tion ; and percepts easily lend themselves to this dual method 
of analysis and synthesis peculiar to the organization of sense 
into reason. The attempt to react upon the feelings of 
pleasure and pain with the aim of producing a general feeling 
of happiness comparable to the synthesis of sensations, in the 
concept, ends in failure; not, however, because psychical 
combinations are impossible in themselves, but because at- 
tention and memory, wherein the hope of these syntheses 
lies, are not applicable to the affectional process of conscious- 



98 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ness. 

Hedonic self-realization seems doomed to defeat in the 
first encounter, inasmuch as the instantaneous and static 
forms of pleasure permit of nothing cumulative. To 
abstract the pleasurable feeling from a mass of conscious ex- 
periences so that it shall exist by itself in a peculiar mental 
isolation is beyond the power of attention, and probably for 
the reason that this process is itself a mental interest which 
cannot be turned upon itself. It was in the perception of 
some such truth that the ancients developed the proverb of 
the "Sweet elbow," which represented the tantalizing 
quality of that pleasure which, in its close association with 
the mind of man, could not be made the object of external 
apprehension. Plato discourses upon it in connection with 
his famous erotic and says that "the 'Sweet elbow' of which 
the proverb speaks, is really derived from the long and diffi- 
cult arm of the Nile." (Phaedrus, 257.) Desire for 
pleasure is like the hunger and thirst of Tantalus whose lips 
cannot quite touch the waters, whose hand just fails to 
grasp the clusters of over-hanging fruit. Mental activity, 
which exerts itself in conation and cognition, is not alert 
enough to seize pleasure, and the attempt to realize such an 
evanescent quality is a mere grasping after water. 

In the same provoking fashion the mental function of 
memory reveals its unwillingness to reproduce feeling, for 
when we seek to recall pleasure we recollect only the fact of 
having experienced it, which now by way of contrast may 
cause a certain sense of pain as we realize that the pleasure 
is gone. Sensations are memorized and reappear as ideas, 
or mental images of external impressions; impulses return to 
consciousness in ideo-motor forms which enable us to repeat 
our acts and thus gradually perfect them, as in cases of feats 
of skill ; but feelings remain aloof from the mind and when 
they occur again they appear in new and original form, 
Affection is not capable of that synthetic process which, in 
the case of cognition, produces class-terms, whether in a real 
or conceptual form. The place of pleasure is solitary, and 
it is because of its peculiar behaviour that some have ever 
regarded it as a mere absence of painful feeling; its place 
can never be anything but peripheral, for it is removed from 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 99 

the central processes of knowing and doing. Hence, a philo- 
sophic view of happiness, such as springs from the eudaemon- 
istic theory of life, mates no attempt to employ pleasure, 
which would seem to be so akin to the subject, but concerns 
itself wholly with the claims of intellect and will. More- 
over, the burden of life is not to be expressed in terms of 
unpleasantness, and the enthusiasm for the world, which 
marks the career of the victorious personality, consists in no 
feeling of pleasure. He who succeeds is beyond both pain 
and pleasure, and a hedonic estimate of life is too half- 
hearted for a genuine humanity, whose emotions are infra- 
painful and jw^rtf-pleasant. 

The mystery of pleasure, which persuades man that, as 
the sweet sensation is apparently preferable to others whose 
status is really the same, his humanity should realize itself in 
hedonism, has thus warped man's estimate of life and led him 
to elevate to the highest station a form of consciousness which 
is no primus inter pares, but merely one among many other 
psychic elements. There is nothing extraordinary about 
pleasure. Why, then, should hedonic philosophy think to 
subsume all human striving under that particular head, and 
thus represent the endless affirmation of man's spiritual na- 
ture as a mere craving for immediate enjoyment? There is 
material for a pessimistic philosophy in the recognition that 
feeling is so irrational, whereby pleasure so often affiliates 
itself and identifies its subject with forms of activity which 
are vicious and absurd. Where will and intellect follow 
the general analogy of the real world, and make possible a 
voluntaristic and intellectualistic view, feeling is subjective 
and arbitrary, and does not readily lend itself to the obvious 
plan of humanity. 

3 THE HEDONIC LAW 

As the general sense of human welfare, which was 
naively expressed in mere pleasure — pain, was quickened by 
an attempted hedonic calculus, so it was practically refuted 
by the application of the hedonic law. Aristotle was not 
unmindful of the fact that feeling has significance as well as 
mere feltness, for he said, "To feel pleasure or pain signifies 
to experience an activity in a mean function of the sense- 



ioo VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

organ relative to good or bad." (Psy. Bk. in, Ch. vn.) 
In modern times, the utilitarian school indicated a deliberate 
departure from the mechanical computation of pleasures and 
pains, and the ideal of utility, while not non-hedonic, was 
one remove from the immediate experience of felicific feel- 
ing. Utilitarianism thus sought to lay down laws for the 
promotion of general happiness, and its psychology, which 
investigates hedonistic habits and pleasure-associations, tacit- 
ly admits that pleasure is not to be had for the asking. To 
admit the paradox of pleasure would threaten the utilitarian 
formulation of the happiness problem, but the school no 
longer trusted in attention and memory as direct methods of 
realizing and summarizing pleasure; for it entrusted its 
argument to the more general processes of association and 
habit. The change in terminology is likewise significant, 
for instead of particular pleasure with its array of clearly 
defined attributes, we hear of "happiness" and "utility." 
Pleasure still exists in the mind of the hedonist, but its 
character is that of an after-image. 

The fate of pleasure and pain in the hands of the evolu- 
tionist is more decisive and, for a time, it seemed as though 
such a serious and pessimistic view of life would end all 
hedonistic speculations. In some ways, the evolutionist is 
more vigorous an opponent of sheer hedonism than the rigor- 
ist himself, inasmuch as the latter looks upon pleasure as a 
worthy foe, and does not think it beneath his dignity to com- 
bat it. Naturistic evolution represents pleasure and the 
ideal, not as though they were upon the same level, but in 
such a way that pleasure is looked upon as something pre- 
paratory; the scheme is a vertical rather than a horizontal 
one. Pleasure is not rebutted, but simply relegated to an 
inferior position; happiness is neither praised nor blamed, 
but set aside in favor of something hygienic. Human feel- 
ing is subordinated to human condition, and pleasure-pain 
becomes purely symptomatic. Nineteenth century thought 
has not failed to note the infinite seriousness of life, and the 
moralist is no longer inclined to consider human welfare in 
terms of mere pleasure. In the present state of human ex- 
istence, it is sufficient simply to be; to be happy is another 
consideration. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 101 

Spencer's withdrawal from traditional hedonism, how- 
ever, is not complete, for in raising the optimistico-pessimistic 
question, which he likewise fails to discuss, he affirms that 
"life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, bring 
a surplus of agreeable feeling." Good is good because it 
aids life, always assuming, which the evolutionist can hardly 
do with justice, that life brings more happiness than misery, 
while virtue consists in promoting "happiness-producing con- 
duct." Now there is nothing in Spencer's nnVinal concep- 
tion of conduct which demands this hedonic element. 
Spencer's more consistent view entertains the notion that 
pleasure-giving acts are those which are life-producing, while 
pain-giving ones are life-decreasing. This hedonic law, may 
be unsatisfactory in itself, but has the effect of relegating 
psychological hedonism to a secondary position; life is too 
vast to subordinate itself to pleasure, but it can make use of 
that feeling in realizing itself in the organism. "Every 
pleasure increases vitality; every pain decreases vitality. 
Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the 
tide of life." It is plain that "life" here receives only 
biological consideration, and the human vocation in the 
achievement of ethical destiny is ignored. The hedonic law 
habitually ignores the effect of stimulants and narcotics in 
producing pleasure and decreasing life, just as it fails to 
observe that the entrance of destructive germs, like those of 
typhus in drinking-water, may prove insipid but deadly. 
Probably no evolution which may take place in the nervous 
system will ever make man sensitive to such influences. 

How far the argument from pleasure as symptomatic may 
lead ultimately, it has advanced sufficiently to supersede 
pleasure as the goal of life. Stephen's new ideal of hygiene 
illustrates this, and its critical value may be appreciated, 
while its constructive significance is ignored. Instead of the 
political aggregate, Stephen introduces the ideal of social 
organism; in place of happiness, the ideal of health. As a 
result, the utilitarian maxim, "Produce the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number," is changed to, "Promote the health 
of the social organism." Still another point of critical value, 
when one is taking leave of utilitarianism is Stephen's pre- 
ference for a kind of organic morality over what he calls 



io2 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

"instantaneous morality." This is a genuine appeal to sys- 
tem as well as a recognition that a philosophy of life is 
logically prior to a science of ethics, which hurriedly seeks 
moral truth in the phenomenal order of things. 

4 — LIFE ACCORDING TO DESIRE 

Thus far, our attempt to explain the consciousness and 
conduct of man while still upon the plane of nature, has 
done little else than evoke a certain confused sense of human- 
ity in the form of unorganized pleasure-pain. Man has 
been viewed mechanically as though he belonged to some 
other than a human order; indeed, the very naturism which 
besets him has failed of explanation. To account for human 
feelings and motive, our phsychological analysis must pene- 
trate beneath the surface of pleasure and survey man in 
action as this is brought about by desire. For it is desire 
which naturizes and then hedonizes man, not pleasure. De- 
sire is the nervous system of hedonism; pleasure belongs 
to the sympathetic one. The two must be subjected 
to some convincing form of distinction, a need which tradi- 
tional hedonism has not recognized. Nature assumes a 
great responsibility when she undertakes to perfect any 
species, and how much greater is this burden when man is 
the object of her concern. Can such responsibility 
be discharged by means of pleasure-pain? This 
seems unlikely; hence we turn to desire as something more 
organic than superficial feeling, according to whose psycho- 
logy man is attracted by pleasure and repelled by pain. Such 
an account of humanity is entirely incomplete and represents 
only the exterior of its being. Assuming the realization of 
the hedonic ideal, who would choose to live in the atmos- 
phere of perfect pleasure without the instructive influence of 
pain? Nature never taught man hedonism, for she has 
laid down a plan wherein pain is more prominent and more 
important than pleasure. 

Desire is a form of human experience which includes 
both pleasure and pain and does not fail to add a volitional 
quality. Where pure conation cannot be described, except 
by employing the language of either sensation or affection, 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 103 

whereby we speak of a "sense of striving" or a "feeling of 
effort," its want of quality may be made up by the aid of 
desire. This psychic compound stands for a fusion of feel- 
ing and will. For this reason we are forbidden to regard 
desire as pleasure and aversion as pain, for desire draws a 
circle about all feeling, over which it exercises an active 
lordship. Thus in both range and activity does desire differ 
from feeling. A glance at human conduct will reveal this, 
and will result in interpolating pleasure and pains as means. 
Desire arises as a sense of want which looks forward to a 
time when pleasure shall come or pain depart ; in this way, it 
acts as a motive which directs man toward pleasure and away 
from pain, and exists in a psychological moment when feeling 
is not yet present. By its very nature, feeling is something to 
be suffered or experienced in a passive manner, while desire is 
active and is the cause of man's movement in one direction or 
another. Not only does desire reveal its motor-capacity and 
thus anticipate pleasure, but it possesses a certain ideational 
form which extends it beyond the borders of feeling in the 
farther direction. Feeling exists for its feltness; desire 
arises for the sake of some more or less remote goal, and thus 
we speak of a desire for something. Hence, as its volitional 
function makes it prior to pleasure, so its ideational form 
exceeds this feeling on the posterior side. The hedonic life 
is a life according to desire. 

In the larger history of psychology, this necessary dis- 
tinction between desire and pleasure has not received any too 
much recognition. Nevertheless we have the classic example 
of an ancient Aristotle as well as the instructive error of a 
modern Mill. The ancient writer all but affirms that we 
could live without pleasure, but not without activity; for, 
according to some such assumption, lie claims that "there are 
many things about which we should be diligent, even though 
they brought no pleasure." (Eth. Nicom. Bk. x, Ch. 2.) 
Aristotle was a thorough eudaemonist ; hence any decisions 
against pleasure which he may hand down are of special 
weight as coming from one who assumed no rigorous attitude 
toward life. He removes pleasure from the causal category 
by distinguishing it from all forms of motion. In itself, 
pleasure is complete in the present where it is experienced 



104 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

instanter, while movement is marked both by duration and 
a certain end to be accomplished. "It is plain then, that 
pleasure and movement must be different from one another, 
and that pleasure belongs to the class of things whole and 
complete." (lb. Ch. 3.) When Aristotle discusses pleas- 
ure in contrast with energy, he adjusts these disparate func- 
tions by declaring that "pleasure does not come into being 
without energy, while pleasure perfects every energy." (lb. 
Ch. 4.) Full justice is done to pleasure, when it is pointed 
out that men do not really grasp at pleasure, but at life 
which, however, is perfected, though not produced, by pleas- 
ure. 

In the interests of utilitarianism, Mill found it con- 
venient to take up the same question, but with no such 
psychological success as accompanied the course of Aristotle's 
eudaemonism. The modern utilitarian starts out with the 
idea that the desire for happiness is the leading motive in 
human life, and is thus unable to comprehend how any other 
end could be the goal of humanity. Man is so constituted 
that he can desire only happiness, and to conclude that he 
can desire anything which is not pleasant, is a "physical and 
metaphysical impossibility." (Utilitarianism, Ch. iv.) The 
larger statement of this hedonic circle is as follows: "desiring 
a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of 
it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather 
two parts of the same phenomenon ; in strictness of language, 
two different modes of naming the same psychological fact." 
(lb.) Nature, however, does not seem to be so devoted to 
hedonism, for in her plan of activity and the acquisition of 
knowledge on the part of her creatures, who are supposed 
both to serve and to recognize her, pain is no insignificant 
factor, and one which organic beings are not prepared to 
avoid. Therefore, to make immediate pleasure our watch- 
word is to change the plan of the universe as now understood 
in human experience. 

5 — DESIRE AND HUMAN STRIVING 

In its common operations, desire is singularly oblivious 
of pleasure in both quantitative and qualitative forms, con- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 105 

tent as it is to liberate the energy of human volition and to 
attain to something external by way of object. Persistence 
of life, not pursuit of pleasure, love of power, not desire for 
happiness, are the significant marks of mankind. Grecian 
and Germanic ideals, far removed from Anglo-American 
commercialism, are nearer the heart of living, acting human- 
ity. There is no hysteria in the mind of Ibsen's Ella Ren- 
theim when in the play which bears his name, she reproaches 
John Gabriel Borkman for having killed the lovelife with- 
in her by saying, "You have cheated me out of a mother's 
joy and happiness in life — and of a mother's sorrows and 
tears as well. And perhaps this is the heaviest part of the 
loss to me." (Act 11.) Self-realization looks upon pleas- 
ure and pain indifferently, and in the face of life, whose 
metaphysical realities and moral responsibilities must be 
met, there is no time to sit down and calculate the sum of 
pleasure, or estimate the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number. Pleasure or pain, happiness or misery, life must 
be carried on, man be himself, and humanity rise above na- 
ture. The centrifugal desire for life never waits for he- 
donistic estimates to be made. Man is human, not hedonic; 
he must have life, not pleasure; his progress is made, not 
inch wise, but by cataclysm. 

To come into contact with life, not merely to taste its 
possible pleasures, is the only real and justifiable aim of a 
nervous, warm-blooded animal of the human type. Apart 
from any claims of the ideal, which is ever superior to the 
hedonic life, the exigencies of naturism itself, when it de- 
mands a strong and healthy animalism, render the hedonis- 
tic scheme quite superfluous. Let us live and persist in liv- 
ing; if pleasure come we will welcome it; if it come not, 
life can proceed notwithstanding. Naturism should pray 
for deliverance from its friends; for, the realization of the 
preliminary, the fundamental form of human existence de- 
pends upon the elimination of an artificial utilitarian pro- 
gram. For this reason, it need no longer be claimed that 
hedonism is not ideal and worthy; it is sufficient to feel that 
it is not real or reliable, and he who would find himself in 
nature, and live out his life in animalism must seek some 
other than a hedonic guide. 



106 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

The supremacy of desire appears as soon as living human- 
ity seeks to realize itself, and no trustworthy picture of life 
could be portrayed hedonically. In the approach to life 
which Rembrandt and Velasquez represent, there is no sense 
of hedonic calculus, however much of desire and human striv- 
ing may enter into the scene and reflect themselves in the liv- 
ing countenances of the figures. Holbein returned to 
humanity without adapting any hedonic standards, and even 
the earth-life of man, as shown recently in Millet's genre 
work, finds nature without making hedonistic calculations. 
Ibsen's dramatis personae carry on their conflict with the 
world and society wholly oblivious of utilitarianism, while 
Wagner's heroes and heroines seek redemption from life 
without having computed its pleasures and pains. Schop- 
enhauer arrives at pessimism by observing the nature of the 
will and its actual fate in the world and the dreary conclu- 
sion to which his judgments lead is due to no pleasure-pain 
conflict. Nietzsche's "blond beast" or "Superman" craves, 
not pleasure, but power, and looks to nature to supply him 
with egoism rather than hedonism. 

Psychological hedonism, which was as great an error as 
the ethical schools have ever committed, is far removed from 
its own subject, namely, man as such, apart from any ra- 
tionalistic consideration. We need not comment upon the 
manifest unworthiness of the hedonic ideal, for that would 
be to judge it in the light of its competitor, Intuitionism ; we 
need only judge in accordance with its own standard, and 
say that it fails to present the case of man as either human 
or natural. An earth-born creature seeks his destined hu- 
manity, and this he will realize in either a higher or a lower 
sense. Naturism must feel that it is cheated out of its in- 
heritance, when all the activity of man is made to consist 
in a pursuit of pleasure. If man were the hedonic instead 
of the human animal, his life would not reveal that central- 
izing intensity, that perpetual search after human realization 
which has made him what he is. 

Having ruled British ethical thinking since the days of 
Hobbes, psychological hedonism is at the end of its reign. 
A genuine naturism must take its place, and when the stage- 
like and preparatory nature of this view, which pervades 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 107 

thinking as well as living, is appreciated, both theory and 
life will be the gainers. A nearer approach to the heart of 
humanity is found in the voluntaristic view of the soul. To 
regard man conatively, as one who instinctively reacts upon 
his experience, strives with nature, and aims at the realiza- 
tion of what he is, is nearer the great human truth than that 
conception which takes experience as it is with the aim of 
combining ideas and feelings in the form of hedonistic aims 
and motives — a most unstable compound indeed. By virtue 
of its unified character, will is strikingly adapted to the ex- 
pression of unified humanity, and it is the will-life which 
makes man what he is. With the function of desire at our 
command, we need no longer resort to a mechanical hedonism 
to account for human progress ; man's culture and civilization 
result from the spontaneous activity of a restless will, not 
from the calculations of primitive utilitarians. 

By means of the psychology of desire, we are able to 
revise our estimate of mankind, so that we are no longer 
confronted by examples of self -enjoyment, but by endless 
instances of human self-realization. Hedonism, as such, 
can never account for the totality of man's being or for that 
ceaseless activity which has fashioned art and formulated 
religious faith, and in the presence of human history, it is 
absurd to prescribe the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number as the maxim for mankind. The ruling passion is 
for life as such, without regard to its pleasantness or pain- 
fulness. The man of humanity looks upon pleasure as 
either the concomitant of human energy or as an extra 
product contributed by nature in all her resourcefulness. 
So patent is the life-impulse that man needs no promissory 
pleasure to urge him on, and in the world of naturism the 
position of pleasure is only eccentric. It is desire which 
constitutes man, and a critical view of naturistic ethics can 
only regard him as the desiring animal to whose consciousness 
the purpose of life gradually reveals itself. 



Ill 

THE NATURISTIC VIEW OF THE SELF AND 
HUMANITY 

I — HUMAN SELFHOOD 

When the inner sense and outward striving of humanity 
have found their place in the naturistic system, it becomes 
necessary to inquire to what extent these afferent and efferent 
characteristics are individual, to what degree social in their 
application. Therefore, when we endeavor to derive from 
life the values peculiar to humanity, we are brought face to 
face with the norms of egoism and altruism. Our belief is 
that ethics aims at the perfection of humanity. Now arises 
the question, whether this is to be brought about by the high- 
est individual intensity, or the greatest social extensity, which 
amounts to inquiring whether humanity is best expressed by 
the self or society. The usual discussion of the problem as- 
sumes that altruism is right, needing only ethical corrobora- 
tion, while egoism is wrong, so that we must indicate its 
fallacy. This ethical assumption carries with it the psycholo- 
gical presupposition that the self-assertive tendency is so 
strong that it needs to be curbed, while social instincts are 
so weak that they deserve moral furtherance. Pure human- 
ism, however, does not entertain such prejudices, but leads 
us to see that genuine self-realization may be a motive alto- 
gether too weak in mankind, while the conformity of con- 
vention may have become a human habit too overpowering. 
From this standpoint then, it seems as though the claims of 
the inner self needed to be upheld in opposition to mere 
conventions which may smother individuality. Hence, our 
argument concerning egoism must be an argument for and 
not against the self. 

To defend this kind of egoistic doctrine, one must base 
his claims upon selfhood, which in a metaphysical sense shall 

108 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 109 

be real, while, morally viewed, it is dignified. Then the 
egoistic argument will assume a new form. The usual view 
of egoism is faulty on the metaphysical side, inasmuch as it 
does not secure any tenable idea of selfhood. One cannot 
uphold a doctrine of egohood where the view of self is that 
of blind solipsism, and the ego of the traditional theory has 
been nothing more than an isolated and unqualified "self." 
This ipsesistic view is to be opposed, not only on grounds 
of altruism, but for the sake of egoism itself, for no doctrine 
of selfhood can be based upon the pure punctual ego who is 
a self in name only. As an ideal, this private person does 
not represent humanity at all, but gives the impression of a 
solitaire. Thus it comes about that the common or naturis- 
tic notion of the ego is to be criticised, not because it is a 
dangerous moral doctrine, for such it is not, but because it 
offers a misleading metaphysics. 

In addition to securing a more tenable view of the self, 
our ethics must further observe that the conflict which the 
ego in its selfhood is carrying on consists, not in a conflict 
with other egos who make up solid society, but with some- 
thing alien to its humanistic nature, namely: the world. For 
this reason, the true egoistic problem is this, "Shall I assert 
myself in opposition to the world-whole, or shall I submit 
to it?" This general question concerns every ego, whether 
viewed individually or socially. Where altruism is ad- 
vanced as an argument it is not because egoism is wrong, 
for the refutation of egoism depends upon a view of life far 
more profound than the metaphysics of altruism will admit. 
When we sum up all the issues of life for the sake of find- 
ing out wherein our human dignity consists, we shall weigh 
the ego with the world to see which has the greater claim 
upon the will. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to inquire how far 
naturism can supply us with a principle of selfhood, and since 
nature is far removed from spiritual life, selfhood is prob- 
ably remote from self -enjoyment. 

Nevertheless, when we cast out self-love, we must not 
cast out the self with it, for selfhood is a condition without 
which humanity cannot be realized. In our altruistic haste 
to organize humanity according to a social ideal, we over- 
look the importance of the ego, so that we have as the 



no VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

natural result a de-individualized community marked by 
mediocrity. But given the ego as the starting-point and 
assuming the ego as the goal of our moral striving, we do 
not find it impossible to relate him to the social order sur- 
rounding him; for the individual is capable of a social in- 
terpretation, while with solidarity as the ideal the ego is 
lost in the mass. Of the two, the self is a better representa- 
tive of humanity than society, while the realization of human- 
ity through activity depends upon the self-assertion of the 
individual according to an ideal, rather than upon the self- 
suppression of the ego for altruistic purposes. It is im- 
possible to effect the logical subordination of the individual 
to society, but on the other hand, the conditions of ideal 
humanity are satisfied when society is subsumed under the 
individual. To the individual one looks for content and 
character, for that inner life without which humanity can- 
not come to realization and, with all its importance the 
social element is to be subordinated to the ideal of selfhood. 
To effect this idea of introactive selfhood, our ethics 
must be careful to avoid the snares of petty ipsesism, and we 
must bear in mind that selfhood, instead of being given in 
nature, is acquired by man within and through himself. 
For this reason, we shall have to break with the traditional 
conception of the ego as formulated according to the ideal 
of self-love, inasmuch as the self-loving ego is not strong 
enough to bear the responsibility of selfhood. Neverthe- 
less, nature puts into our hands more perfect weapons of 
egoism than those of sense; from her we receive the prin- 
ciple of individuation and the power to will the self. This 
principle of individuation we leave already discussed; hence 
it remains for us to contrast the ideals of egoism, repre- 
sented by the expressions, "Selfhood in Sense" and "The 
Will to Selfhood." 

I — SELFHOOD IN SENSE 

The problem of inner selfhood is not clearly presented 
upon the hedonic basis, for just as the "hedonic calculus" 
fails to unite the given feelings of pleasure, so it is equally 
unsatisfactory in revealing a genuine ego in and behind the 






VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE in 

pleasurable impressions. Hedonic egoism, however, may be 
expressed, not only as *the tendency to group pleasures into 
a sum of happiness, but to organize desires for the sake of 
self-gratification. This more activistic view of the self 
comes nearer the goal of egoism, for the ego is more like 
itself in exercising personal energies than it is in receiving 
impressions as they come from the external order of things. 
In his desires, man begins to be himself, and when a system 
like Buddhism warns its disciple that the attainment of 
Nirvana depends upon the removal of desire, we begin to 
realize the importance of this element in the ideal of self- 
realization. The desire for selfhood thus seems to possess 
metaphysical significance, and our intimation of an inner life 
seems to come, as it were hedonically, from the demand 
which desire makes upon the world of persons as also upon 
the world of things. 

Apart from this immediate form of self-assertion, there 
seems to be no path to selfhood and inner humanity, so that 
we must realize the ethical value of a tendency on the part 
of the ego to assert itself in its desires. These desires are 
personal so that the "I" includes the "mine", and while the 
tendency is as yet selfish it is none the less selflike, deserving 
some degree of commendation. An ethical system based 
upon the ego is as great a problem as a metaphysical one based 
upon the self; both represent necessary tendencies in practi- 
cal and speculative philosophy, while both must be defended 
against their own solipsism. 

Egoism is a doctrine so profound that hedonism seems 
incapable of realizing it. Were we left to the rigoristic 
view of life, the ego would never appear, inasmuch as all the 
ideals of the rationalistic view are impersonal just as they 
tend to destroy the self. Our hope of selfhood seems to lie 
in the hands of the naturistic thinker, and we must exercise 
care when we observe the elements which he contributes to 
the individualistic ideal. Selfhood should be a duty and as 
such the rigorist should advance it; thus far it has been re- 
garded as a privilege granted by nature and not wholly 
opposed by society. But do hedonic privileges afford any- 
thing more than immediate self-realization which does not 
reach the recesses of selfhood ? Can man find his self in his 



ii2 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

feelings? Doubtful as the hedonic egoism may be, the fact 
remains that, in our modern ethics, the hedonist has been the 
one to play the part of the egoist, although there is no real 
reason why the rigorist could not have sufficient "reasonable 
self-love" of the Butlerian type to assert his duty as his 
own. But the weight of duty was so oppressive that the 
ego could scarcely breathe under it, hence it is not the 
rigorist who finds the self, although the uncompromising 
"Brand" is as much of a superman as the sensuous "Peer 
Gynt." Hedonism reveals the desirability of selfhood, 
while the rigoristic view so depresses man that he despairs 
of himself. 

Yet the perfection of egohood is more than naturism can 
accomplish. Self-love is a tendency far removed from the 
essential nature of self-assertion; it gives selfishness with- 
out a self and does not show the individual how he may dis- 
tinguish himself from the mass wherein self-love is the 
common tendency. Private happiness in distinction from 
public benefit is another indication of this blind attempt to 
realize inner selfhood. Hedonism cannot tell what it means 
to be one's self, for by means of self-enjoyment one shuts 
his soul up within the self, while he fails to withdraw it 
from the solidarity of the social order. Selfhood in sense 
is thus a dubious product which we can hardly accept as a 
substitute for the individualistic ideal, and while the sense- 
life of man admits of individuation, it does not show how 
this ego is to receive content and character. On the prac- 
tical side, self-love is so shallow that it cannot really float 
the soul-self in which the true egoist rejoices. Caesar, 
Michel Angelo, and Bonaparte can hardly be accounted for 
upon the basis of the hedonic summation of pleasures in its 
form of self-love, and the vigorous individual everywhere 
seeks something more thrilling than this Bohemian notion of 
self-enjoyment. 

The need of the egoistic theory is to be found in a more 
radical idea of the ego who is of more importance than either 
egoist or altruist realizes. Hobbes looked upon egoism as 
something inevitable and proceeded to work out his theory of 
social life upon the basis of compact, in which in spite of 
apparent altruism the ego is interested in himself alone. His 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 113 

inner consciousness of compassion is none the less a form of 
self-commiseration forbidding all truly altruistic interpreta- 
tion (cf. Human Nature Ch. iv 10.) Butler's defence of the 
ego is startling. "If it be said," he urges, "that there are 
persons in the world who are without natural affection 
toward their fellow-creatures, there are likewise instances 
of persons without the common natural affection to them- 
selves. . . . Men as often contradict that part of their 
nature which respects self as they contradict that part of it 
which respects society." (Sermons. 1). On this ground 
of the lack of egoism, he contends for "cool" or "reasonable" 
self-love. Butler's plea for the self was a religious one, and 
just as Hobbes had shown how man ever has an eye to his 
social safety, Butler bases his egoism on the theological tend- 
ency to look out for the salvation of one's own soul. 

Schopenhauer's treatment of the ego, when added to the 
political and theological views already noted, shows how deep- 
seated is the self-instinct. Schopenhauer's voluntaristic 
idealism treats the punctual ego as an illusion. Owing to 
the principle of individuation, the one will-to-live appears 
phenomenally in the manifold of egos, who are separated 
from one another by time and space. As each one represents 
the whole world to his own mind, so he desires the whole 
world for himself, whence arises the solipsistic illusion lead- 
ing the ego to consider the world as his world. Hence the 
individual is "ready to annihilate the world in order simply 
to preserve his own self, this drop in the ocean, a bit longer." 
{Welt als Wille u. Vors. § 61). This egoistic world-desire 
carries with it the further illusion of the ego as world- 
ground, whereby "every one looks upon his own death as 
the end of the world, while he accepts the death of an ac- 
quaintance as a rather unimportant matter." (lb.) These 
views of the self tend further to convince us that egoism real- 
ly involves more than a sense of private happiness, while the 
affair of being one's self consists in a real life-conquest 
marked by something more than felicitous experiences. 

Selfhood is an achievement, and few there be who suc- 
ceed in attaining to individuality. The typical hedonic 
egoist is ably caricatured by Ibsen in "Peer Gynt," just as 
Brand had realized the ideal of a moralistic ego. The watch- 



ii4 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

word of the Gyntish ego is, "Man, be thyself," but the en- 
deavor to erect selfhood upon the basis of sense ends in fatal 
self-sufficiency rather than self-affirmation. Peer Gynt is 
thus no better than a naturistic "hill-troll" who is ever 
illusioned by his sense of self-sufficiency, for where among 
men they say, "Man, be thyself," among the hill-trolls it is 
said, "Troll, to thyself be enough." (Act n Sc. vi.) 
This illusion of self-sufficiency deceives the hero into 
elaborating the "Gyntish Self" as "Human Life's Emperor" 
(Act iv Sc. ix), so that his condition is not wholly unlike 
that of the Cairo maniac shut up, as it were, in the "Barrel 
of Self." (Act iv Sc. m). The pleasure-loving and 
world-roving hero thus fails to develop selfhood except as 
the negative of a personal portrait, and containing but the 
raw material of personality he is fit only to be recast in the 
ladle of the Button Moulder. (Act v Sc. vii). The ego 
of sense can never assume a heroic form, indeed, he is not 
even dangerous, but there is another way of securing self- 
hood according to which one seeks to obey Nietzsche's in- 
junction, "Be hard." The rigorous Superman thus steels his 
forehead against compunction and compassion ; he approaches 
selfhood through the will. 

2 — THE WILL TO SELFHOOD 

In the self, humanity shows its ability to transcend the 
natural order where individuality is unknown, except as a 
formal principle of individuation. But the self is not to be 
had for the asking and, as we have seen, the attempt to erect 
selfhood upon the basis of sense is a failure, inasmuch as 
human emotions are not sufficiently rigid to overcome the 
downward influence of nature and solidarity. For this 
reason, the egoist appeals to the will hoping to find in self- 
willing the rigidity necessary to overcome the gravity of 
mere existence. This phase of egoism is only suggested by 
the softer form of self -gratification, so that in measuring our 
current egoism it were well to ignore the older type of self- 
hood in sense for the sake of the more advanced doctrine of 
the will to selfhood. Just as the sweet sensation and the 
pleasurable feeling represent exaggerated forms of conscious 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 115 

interest, so self-love assumes a prominence far beyond its 
ability to justify, and for the sake of individualism one must 
seek to discover a more teViable view of the self. 

The injunction, "Be hard!" reacts upon both hedonism 
and intuitionism, for as we shall see, the hedonic view of 
life elaborates an ideal of benevolence while the intuitional 
view opposes the ego by means of conscience. It is on this 
account that the voluntaristic ego must fortify himself against? 
both compassion and compunction, for these sentiments unite 
in a sense of sympathy destructive of all self-assertion. The 
ego may not be able to assert himself to the end, but in the 
struggle for selfhood, he must be ready to abandon the 
Garden of Epicurus and engage in an egoistic enterprise 
more ambitious. The historic egoists are not slaves to self- 
love but masters of power, and their will is not the will to 
enjoy but the will to create. Only such a voluntaristic view 
can account for Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon in politics, 
or Phidias, Angelo and Beethoven in art. Pleasure never 
creates personality and no amount of self -enjoyment can pro- 
duce self-assertion. 

The emptiness of egoism as ordinarily understood is one 
with the shallowness of hedonism, and even when one is not 
pledged to the ideal he must avoid the snare set by a tradi- 
tional form of philosophy making life to consist of a sum of 
pleasurable feelings of which "self" is the shining center. 
Such schemes as those of pure hedonism and pure egoism are 
sure indications that the essence of life is not contained in 
immediacy, or its realization in the yielding nature of feeling. 
Even in his purely natural capacity as a creature living in 
independence of ideals and duties, man has some sense of the 
integral character of his being, so that he must settle with 
his striving nature by adapting a harder view of life and the 
self. The hedonic solitaire is too cavalier-like and being 
devoid of personality he is without prominence in the world 
of persons. Such a naturistic solitaire presents a problem 
needing more sufficient statement rather than solution, while 
the ego is to be revised rather than repudiated. The "self" 
of sense is no ethical factor whether for good or bad, and in 
order to come abreast of the egoistic problem, our thought 
must advance beyond the idea of the British ego who loves 



n6 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

himself to the Continental type of individual who wills him- 
self. 

The genuine problem of selfhood reveals the fact that 
the creature of "self-love" is but a sub-ego, or individuating 
consciousness which has come up from nature without feel- 
ing the internal effects of civilization and culture; for this 
rudimentary ego, Hobbes and English ethics up to Sidgwick 
is responsible. If the ego does exist psychologically, he is 
not worthy of ethical consideration, for he is a source of no 
moral difficulty. Hedonic egoism has taken the ego for 
granted, while altruism has feared that, let alone, he would 
immediately fall into selfhood. But selfhood does not exist 
as something given, and still less is it a fixed condition into 
which the soul may fall ; hence hedonism assumes too much 
and proves too little in the way of individualism. To be 
himself, man must will himself. Selfhood is an inward 
creation, not an outward fact; it must be achieved, not 
simply accepted. Left alone, the ego merely drifts with the 
natural stream of tendency, his nature becoming soft and 
impersonal instead of being edged with individualism. To 
achieve selfhood, the ego must make the ego an object, and 
instead of accepting selfhood as a matter of necessity, as 
Hobbes suggested, the ego must follow the freedom of the 
Fichtean Ich which posits itself. 

The elaboration of selfhood in will was the work of the 
nineteenth century, and was not independent of Napoleon. 
From Stendhal, Nietzsche seems to have learned of the 
Superman, but Stendhal who served under Bonaparte, could 
advance only the ideal of a vicious hero, like Julian Sorel in 
"Red and Black." Stirner's Einzige was calculated to live 
without beliefs and ideals, but was he anything more than 
the solitaire of sense? Ibsen's company of egos know only 
one law, "Be thyself!" Brand attempts it in the realm of 
spirit, Peer Gynt in the world of sense, while Emperor 
Julian seeks to will himself. Nora, who had been anti- 
cipated by Villier's Elizabeth in "The Revolt," asserts her- 
self in defiance of the social order, while Hilda urges "The 
Master Builder" to seek selfhood by scaling the tower he 
has built. The hesitancy of Ibsen is matched by the in- 
herent weakness of Nietzsche and Wagner who create types 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 117 

strikingly contrasted with their own natures; while Niet- 
zsche's Superman is above, all sympathy, Wagner's Siegfried 
is beyond fear, and yet it is only by vehement assertions on 
the part of their respective authors that they are enabled to 
secure their selfhood. Sudermann has added several signifi- 
cant portraits to the gallery of egoists, and while the influence 
of Ibsen, Wagner and Nietzsche is not wanting they bear the 
original stamp of selfhood. Paul, in "Dame Care," reveals 
the want of a self-asserting soul; Regina, in "The Cat's 
Bridge," preserves her savage selfhood untainted by any 
social or ethical hindrances; Beata, in the "Joy of Living," 
cares naught for the "conscience of the race," for she has 
her own individuality. In these examples of feminism and 
egoism one observes the striving towards aesthetic personal- 
ity, and the only pity is that the ego-movement involves so 
much of the abnormal as to suggest megalomania. Russian 
and French writers, like Turgenieff and Maurice Barres 
advance their egoism more humbly. Meanwhile no one 
shows us the degree with which egoism is compatible with 
socialism. 

The chief view of this secondary form of selfhood is that 
it repudiates the soft ego of sense by showing how the in- 
dividual must strive and suffer in the achievement of self- 
hood. Egoism is not too strong but too weak, as both But- 
ler and Ibsen point out, hence the first work to be per- 
formed by the ego is a self-centred one. Voluntaristic 
egoism changes the character of the problem from a petty 
quarrel between egoist and altruist to a vast conflict between 
the individual and the world, and henceforth the ethical 
subject is not to ask, "Shall I love myself?" but, "Shall I be 
myself?" The opponent of the ego is not another ego or a 
world full of these, but the world itself. To adapt one's 
self to the world, whether in opposing it or in submitting to 
it, one must become an individual. We do not claim that 
the end of life consists in individuality, or that the highest 
form of reality is to be found in selfhood; but we do insist 
that whatever is to be done must be done through the in- 
dividual, and if the highest form of life consists in renuncia- 
tion it is the renunciation of the self by the self. Only as 
the ego wills his being, can he will his not-being. 



n8 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

2 HUMAN WORLDHOOD 

Where hedonic egoism fails to make any substantial 
progress toward human selfhood, the burden of correction 
which altruism assumes is not likely to weigh heavily in a 
philosophy of life which is pledged to the totality of things. 
If egoism is not bad enough to be wrong, altruism is not good 
enough to be right, and if self-love is so superficial, the love 
of others by that self will be of no great moral moment. 
Nevertheless, if we penetrate beneath the surface, we may 
find in this controversy the source of a more important dis- 
tinction than that of egoism and altruism; it is the conflict 
between the naturistic and characteristic forms of human 
life. Before this service can be appreciated, it must be 
shown how nearly hedonic altruism approaches the borders 
of human worldhood. The progress of democratic ideals 
and social sentiments has made altruism so forcible that the 
need of ethical thought to-day is felt upon the egoistic side 
which stands in need of defense; and one of the problems 
which our ethics must assume is the defense of self-realiza- 
tion as a condition without which humanity can never reach 
its goal. Where egoism has been thwarted by altruism, it 
must now be defended against an adversary no more worthy. 
The true ethical contrast is not that of self and society, but 
of one's own selfhood and worldhood. 

a — THE UTILITARIAN ADJUSTMENT 

Hedonic altruism differs from hedonic egoism in degree, 
but not in kind. Both are forms of a common quantita- 
tive hedonism which, as in Bentham's system, simply adds 
extent to the other attributes of feeling. Altruism thus ex- 
pands pleasure upon the social plane, but does not change 
the ego into a multiple personality. With utilitarianism, 
altruism assumes the form of a proof; with social evolution 
it is a premise. The utilitarian school has exhibited mar- 
velous zeal in the defeat of egoism and the defense of 
altruism, and has spared no pains in making claims for and 
admissions against its ideal to reduce it to cogency. But, in 
both individual and race, the endeavor to sum up feelings to 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 119 

produce a general happiness seems forever hopeless. If the 
hedonic calculus fails to evoke the greatest happiness in the 
individual, the utilitarian plan seems doomed to fail when 
it seeks to demonstrate the "greatest happiness of the great- 
est number," an expression used by Hutcheson in 1725 
(Inquiry, Sec. ill § vm). Where the system cannot find 
the happiness of the ego in his isolation, it is not likely to 
succeed when dealing with a plurality of similar egos, whose 
hedonism is their only humanity and who have no sense of 
personality except that which is given in immediate pleasure. 

Mill's conflict with egoism, as also his defeat at the 
hands of his adversary, have passed into history and need be 
reviewed only for the sake of showing how impossible is 
the solution of the life-problem upon a basis purely hedonis- 
tic. The language of the monograph on "Utilitarianism" 
is unmistakable. "No reason can be given why the general 
happiness is desirable, except that each person desires his 
own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not 
only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it 
is possible to require, that happiness is a good; that each 
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general 
happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." 
This is not only a mechanical summation of which humanity 
is incapable, but an example of the well-recognized fallacy 
of composition, which a logician like Mill could easily have 
recognized. And in the midst of this, the ego in his self-love 
is not affected, his selfishness not corrected ; indeed, he might 
argue "The more pleasure I acquire, so much more will 
there be to contribute toward the general fund." Even 
Hobbes believed in a restricted egoism for the sake of social 
compactness, but Mill's scheme allows full freedom to the 
individual, and instead of advancing toward solidarity, his 
utilitarianism retreats from it. 

The exaggerated claims of this older doctrine of univer- 
sal happiness are supplemented by a rationalistic form of 
hedonism, which seeks to increase the cogency of its proof 
by reducing the claims of its premises. Sidgwick rational- 
izes benevolence and abandons the hope of proving its valid- 
ity, according to the inductive method of Mill. Benevo- 
lence, like justice and prudence, assumes the form of an 



iao VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ideal entertained rather than a rule to be followed empirical- 
ly, and Sidgwick, as he turns away from Mill's "proof," is 
guilty of his own inconsistency, for he looks upon benevolence 
as an "intuition." He expresses himself by saying, "There 
being no actual desire for the general happiness, the proposi- 
tion that general happiness is desirable cannot be in this 
way established : so that there is a gap in the expressed argu- 
ment which can only be filled in by some such proposition 
as the intuition of Rational Benevolence" (Methods of 
Ethics, Bk. m, Ch. xm). Thus was the rational utili- 
tarian driven from his own school by the specter of hedonic 
egoism. Like Mill, Sidgwick greatly overestimated the im- 
portance of hedonistic self-love in the statement of the 
problem, and underestimated the influence of sympathy in 
the solution. Crude hedonism, which has never deduced the 
principle of selfhood, presents a half-hearted egoism which 
is balanced by the sympathetic element in human nature. 

How absurd is the spectacle of these serious utilitarians 
fleeing from such a half-real enemy as egoism! Both warn 
their readers and their critics against that superficiality 
which takes mere impression for intuition, but do they escape 
from this very snare? Mill recommends "practicised self- 
consciousness," but such does not save him from fallacious 
reasoning; Sidgwick is keen enough to shut out nearly all 
intuitions save that of benevolence, but fails to discover the 
common root of sympathy in mankind. The perception of 
this would have spared his academic pride, which must have 
been wounded by the adoption of such an alien principle as 
the "intuition of benevolence." Why struggle to prove al- 
truism? Why assume that the love of self is self-evident? 
To realize how thoroughly man is pervaded by sociability, 
how hemmed in he is by an out-lying humanity, would be to 
save utilitarianism from the stigmata of false logic and bad 
psychology. Man is human, hence he is social : man is also 
individual, hence he cannot flee from his egoistic shadow. 
Neither element is to be eliminated, but both are to be ad- 
justed to an order of being in which they may participate. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 121 

b — THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF CONDUCT 
1 

The evolutionary view of life sinks one degree deeper 
into the phenomenal, and thus reveals a third stage in the 
progress of hedonism, which, having passed through the 
pleasurable and the utilitarian, now takes refuge in the ideal 
of preservation. Apart from any particular point which 
this theory may prove, it must commend itself to him who 
would have mankind surveyed in systematic fashion; and 
while we need express no undue faith in a scheme of pheno- 
menological import only, we can only be refreshed by observ- 
ing how the totality of human life, reflected by hedonist and 
utilitarian, is now recognized. The theory cannot conceal 
the belief that the secret of nature, as an evolving order of 
phenomena, contains the key to the problem of humanity 
which is supposed to continue this development. In carrying 
out this idea, Spencer expands the concept of conduct from 
alert conscious choosing on the part of man, to "the aggre- 
gate of the inter-dependent acts of the organism." (Data 
of Ethics, §2.) 

Evolutionary ethics manifests a plan wholly unknown in 
the realm of hedonic utilitarianism; as a result of this, ethics 
becomes constructive, not merely critical, and morality is 
made, not ideal only, but real. Spencer effects this in a 
conscious, deliberate fashion when, after having criticised 
other systems because they ignored the "causal connections" 
of conduct (lb. § 22 a), he develops characteristic views of 
the subject — physical, biological, psychological, sociological. 
Such are the stages of conduct from the physical to the 
political. The result is system, naturistic system; but it is 
only after urging the idea of conduct to extremes that the 
synthetic philosopher may accomplish his result. Particularly 
in the "physical view of conduct," which finds its beginnings 
in most rudimentary forms of life, does this doubtful exten- 
sion of the concept appear; nor is it absent from the 
"psychological view," which marks the development from 
mere life-feeling, on the part of the organism, to re-repre- 
sentative feelings, appreciated by the human subject in his 
relations with society. Even a glance at the system will 
suggest that such terms as "conduct," "life," "goodness," 



122 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

etc., must be revised to adapt themselves to the particular 
system of naturistic evolution. In itself, it constitutes a 
forceful statement of the claims inherent in the social world- 
order, and instead of being a mere check to egoism or a 
proof of altruism, it represents the whole human system, of 
which, however, it gives but the shell. 

The organic view of conduct which presides over 
Spencer's discussion shows how far removed from any claim 
to immediate happiness is the system of evolutionary ethics. 
With Stephen, this same largesse appears, but in the form 
of a philosophic argument which the school would hardly 
care to meet. Stephen places the organic concept of society 
in a philosophic recess which he had previously created by 
means of a positivistic criticism, which strives to rid itself of 
all philosophical implications by a "postponement of meta- 
physical problems." (Sci. of Eth. Ch. I. § I.) As scientic 
geometry proceeds confidently without discovering the ulti- 
mate nature of spatial ity, and as physics elaborates the laws 
of nature without deciding concerning the ultimate nature of 
reality, so may ethics discuss the science of conduct without 
settling the question of the ultimate nature of morality. This 
"postponement," however, is not observed for any great 
length of time, but only till the advocate of a naturistic sys- 
tem has had time to eliminate ontological views which do not 
command his assent. 

In a more or less perfect way, naturism, as a system of 
mankind, and not a mere principle of insight, assumes shape 
in Stephen's theory. The boldness of it reminds one of 
Plato's construction of the ideal State, while its blindness to 
the implicit opposition of experience resembles the scholastic 
realism which elaborated the ideal of a Catholic Church. 
Spencer's ontological realism is consecrated to the notion of a 
"social organism." In advancing the claims of this concept, 
Stephen criticised the utilitarian school because it had treated 
society as an "aggregate" rather than an "organism." This 
latter expression is used deliberately and repeatedly as the 
basis for indicating the fundamental principle whence all 
moral relations are derived. Every individual being is but a 
part of a system, which itself relates to another system, and 
so on indefinitely; while the connection with the enveloping 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 123 

realm is made known to the constituents by means of a 
special consciousness, or incorporate feeling." Thus is the 
church spoken of as "she" while a corporation is said to 
possess a "soul." (Sci. of Eth. Ch. m, § iv). The social 
organism is made up of "social tissue," and as physiological 
tissue is made up of cells, so social tissue is made up of men. 
This organic conception of society subtends the moral order 
in such a way that the supreme ethical commandment 
changes from a "Do this" to a "Be this" (Sci. of Eth. Ch. 
iv., § 16), while the criterion of goodness changes from 
happiness to health, by virtue of which there arises in place 
of "instantaneous morality" another of a tendential nature 
(lb. Ch. ix). Conduct, which even Spencer looks upon 
collectively as the aggregate of the interdependent acts of 
the organism, becomes more thoroughly functional in its 
application to the social organism. 

In this vaporous atmosphere of social evolution, which 
contrasts so strikingly with the airless scheme of utilitarian- 
ism, it is more difficult to distinguish the individual than it is 
to relate him to his fellow. As hedonism, by its emphasis upon 
instantaneous pleasure with its accompanying personal form, 
was ever inclined toward egoism, the evolutionary mode, 
which is so surrendered to the species, exhibits an excessively 
altruistic tendency that threatens to submerge the isolated 
ego. The evolutionist whose thought is centered upon life 
and its preservation cannot afford to divide the field and thus 
take sides with either party. He realizes that life must 
have an egoistic form, and an altruistic content. Such a view 
is implied in Stephen's conception of a socially organic 
"tissue" made up of living "cells," while Spencer speaks more 
intimately of the ego and society (cf. Data of Ethics, Chs. 
XI, xii ). Society needs the self, as the self needs society, 
and the most acceptable view of their intersection consists 
in their common participation in the one and impersonal 
system of social order. 

As Spencer significantly admits in his "conciliation of 
egoism and altruism (lb. Ch. xiv), this balance of interest 
between the two is now being worked out upon the basis of 
a purely "relative ethics" which, as we should say, is confined 
to the phenomenal order of empirical egos who may be 



124 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

treated singly or socially. Nevertheless, with that vista which 
habitually opens to the gaze of the evolutionist, he is im- 
pressed with the promise of a future form of "absolute ethics" 
which finds the "ultimate man" in an atmosphere untainted 
by either egoism or altruism (lb. Ch. xv). The "concilia- 
tion," therefore, is no solution, and the problem still remains 
for those who find the idealistic interpretation of nature and 
man, not a hindrance to consistent thinking, but a help which 
is ever available to serious and consistent thought. In such a 
spirit, we raise the question, what is society? Hedonism dis- 
cussed it in terms of the individual ; utilitarianism resolved it 
into an aggregate; evolutionism raised it to the rank of an 
organism. Yet the conditions of human conduct cannot be 
fully met until a further step is taken, and society is regarded 
as only the phenomenal form of the world of humanity. 
Hedonism cannot account for human worldhood, since it 
neglects the perfecting influence of culture and does not avail 
itself of the unifying power of human history. In its his- 
toric form, it takes its place with the material system of 
Tamas Guna and the somatic system of Platonic philo- 
sophy ; its heroes are the hylical men of Gnosticism who have 
not advanced beyond the age of sense as indicated by Vico and 
Schiller. Of the hedonists, Spencer alone seems to penetrate 
the heavy veil of naturism; his "ultimate man" promises to 
follow "an ideal code of conduct formulating the behaviour 
of the completely adapted men in the completely evolved 
society" (Data of Eth. § 104). All hedonism is half- 
hearted, and in slavish fear of the ideal, it clings to the 
man of nature; in so doing, it likewise fulfills the satirical 
counsel of the hyperborean who said: 

"Kennel the eagle ; — and let loose 
On empyrean flights the goose." 

C — EGOISM AND SOCIALISM 

The social organization of conduct only half realizes, 
while utilitarianism wholly ignores, the sense of sympathy 
pervading humanity. After Shaftesbury, Hume, and Smith 
had corrected the egoistic psychology of Hobbes, it would 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE i*5 

seem as though the utilitarian benevolence were uncalled for. 
Humanism is sympathism and the progress of civilization 
more and more shows how interdependent are the sons of 
men, while the advancement of culture discloses the common 
world of destiny in which these humans must dwell. There- 
fore all attempts to prove altruism, whether through reason 
or by intuition, are as vain as they are unnecessary in a warm 
human world-order where selfhood is the exception. On the 
social side where this sympathy is taken for granted, the 
result is to create an ideal of concrete solidarity, and the 
"physical view" of conduct from which Spencer sets out is 
indicative of the mechanical collectivism postulated by the 
social aim. Meanwhile the egoism which Spencer carries 
over into the realm of absolute ethics suggests that socialism 
is not a movement wholly altruistic, for the incentive is a 
selfish one prompted by the realization of man's industrial 
servitude. As a result the usual treatise on socialism is largely 
a defense of egoism, while the advancement of an egoistic 
ideal involves socialism. Does not Stirner's Einzige like 
Hobbes' "Leviathian", assume the proportions of a social 
ego? 

From such physical views of humanity we are able to ac- 
quire at least one significant notion — the inevitable tendency 
on the part of the individual to live for others. The common 
view of altruism makes it a virtue when it is a necessity at 
times grievous, and living for another is not merely a self- 
chosen course of fond conduct, but a necessary social burden. 
Militarism meant fighting for others in the persons of cap- 
tains and kings; industrialism means toiling for others called 
merchants and financiers ; hence with sword and spear it was 
warfare for others and with ploughshare and pruning-hook it 
is still a forced altruism. With feudalism, African slavery 
and industrial servitude it was nothing but living for others, 
but was it noble in the performance or beautiful in the ap- 
pearance ? We know that such physical altruism is ever con- 
temptible, and our only reason for adhering to it in practice 
and praising it in idea is because we feel it to be unavoidable 
and fear the emancipation of the individual. 

Both egoism and socialism, which betray a strange affiinity 
for each other, declare that the individual should not live 



126 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

for others, but for himself, for while we are busy furthering 
altruism we are forging new chains of convention and con- 
servatism. Those who have at heart the interests of the 
individual are none the less interested in the social environ- 
ment which he is to have, so that our modern humanistic 
literature, in Stirner and Nietzsche, Wagner and Ibsen, 
Turgenieff and Tolstoi, Bernard Shaw and Anatole France, 
presents a poetical fusion of egoism and socialism. These 
tendencies combine to neutralize the present impersonal sys- 
tem of life incident upon commercialism. A genuine view 
of human life cannot afford to rest its cause with the physical 
and forced altruism of the utilitarian system, for when 
mankind was destined to live in the free air of humanity, 
it is sure to rebel against the subterranean life of Niebelungen 
dwarfs however enchanting the music of the iorgt-motif 
may be. Nevertheless, the individual cannot abide by his 
mere egoism, for man is no more fitted to be a solitaire than 
he is adapted to solidarity. His ultimate attitude toward 
the world we cannot determine as long as we survey him 
upon the purely naturistic level, although we are in a posi- 
tion to affirm that the enlightened ego, raised above selfhood 
in sense or selfhood in will, can realize his own inherent 
humanity only as he entertains universal ideas and adopts 
universal aims. On the other hand, to advance socialism 
without individualism is to bury man alive. American 
altruism, represented by our system of philanthropy, is a 
curious mixture of blind egoism and equally blind benevo- 
lence to which we owe much of our educational and 
eleemosynary work. But all of this is at the expense of the 
individual who finds it more than difficult to realize himself 
in our modern system of mechanical living. 

The social order is not sufficiently yielding for the 
individual who suffers for his non-conformity and uncon- 
ventionally, and the condition of things to-day, when 
Spencer offers the "conciliation" of egoism and altruism 
for the promotion of peace, is not wholly different from that 
of the Enlightenment when Hobbes suggested "contract" as 
the remedy for a state of war. During the three centuries, 
humanity, or the inner life of this physical society, has not 
been brought to the light and men are still recommended 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 127 

to adopt some external form of social adjustment. When 
we realize how humanity as a whole must struggle to exist 
in its conflict with nature, we are in a condition where we 
feel the importance of the social order. Our attitude, 
therefore, assumed in behalf of the individual, is that of 
pessimism and sympathy in an order of being which involves 
both striving and suffering, and this removes us forever from 
the optimistic altruism of conventional morality. In the 
face of the world-whole and under the control of time, the 
ego cannot live unto himself alone, although this fatal con- 
dition of things on the "planet of hunger" is no excuse for 
industrial altruism, where egoism ignores the real self while 
society is ignorant of the resources contained in spiritual 
humanity. 

Altruria, could we discover it, would be a lowland with 
arid deserts, for the leveling effect of the social ideal would 
forbid variation of scene and mountain peaks of prominence. 
Humanity is superior to society, and the self-positing of hu- 
manity means more than the ethical organization of an 
altruistic state. The subtle bond between self and self is 
far different from the rough chain of socialism and soli- 
darity. To recognize humanity in another person, the 
sympathetic individual must penetrate beneath altruism 
which reveals only the phenomenal view of the world of 
persons. The de-individualized order of society is not the 
condition presented by living humanity in either its history 
or acquired present, and the altruistic situation is wanting 
in the prominent features of reality. Altruism does not 
reveal the unity of human life, for it innocently asks us to 
participate in the social order when by our very nature we 
can do nothing else. The individual, when in his indivi- 
duality, has his place in humanity so that the primary need 
of life, when regarded from the social standpoint, consists 
in the recognition and evaluation of the surrounding, under- 
lying order of humanity as such. 

The inherent claims of humanity are not to be satisfied 
by any system of compact or through organized benevolence. 
We have repudiated the solitary ego who was formerly re- 
garded as party to this contract, and now we must conceive 
of society in such a way that it may make room for the 



128 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

individual in his world of selfhood. At the same time, a 
truly social view of mankind must recognize the fact that 
humanity is not wholly detached from nature, but it is so 
under the dominion of sense that its striving for inner 
realization is ever hindered, and the resulting condition of 
humanity is a pathetic one. In the condition of "absolute 
ethics," one might do away with the social order and with 
self-sacrifice, but being a spirit in a sensuous order, the con- 
dition of man is relative indeed. Upon this basis, our philo- 
sophy can postulate sympathy as a necessary element in an 
order of humanity whose perfection is so far from com- 
plete that suffering and error are ever entering in. One 
is not called upon to play the part of an English utilitarian 
in a political order made by man, as it were, but he is ex- 
pected to assume the attitude of a Russian sympathist in 
the consciounsess that humanity itself must be cared for by 
those who constitute it. Optimistic altruism is as vain and 
empty as naive egoism, for the self exists in a human order 
whose condition is pessimistic, and the attitude to be sus- 
tained by him who lives his life as human is the sym- 
pathistic one. The pessimism here involved, however, is 
only the serious condition of humanity striving away from 
the immediate toward the unknown and remote condition 
of things which it sets up as a goal. 

When egoism and altruism are discussed upon the 
naturistic plane of self-love and benevolence, there can be 
no more complete reconciliation than that of compromise. 
The course of humanity is actually a zig-zag one where con- 
duct goes from ego to alter and alter to ego. But, as the 
concluding part of this work will show, the striving for self- 
hood and worldhood, or the endeavor to secure the inness 
and universality of human life, will place man in a posi- 
tion where he need no longer be anxious about the claims 
of a "self" and "society" whose metaphysical status is that of 
phenomenality, while their moral significance is far re- 
moved from the conditions of human dignity. Ego-altruism 
is far below the plane of humanism. 



IV 

THE TRANSMUTATION OF NATURISM AND 
MORALISM 

I — THE PROBLEM OF MORALISM 

The free development of man upon the plane of naturism 
received its first check in the conflict betwen ego and alter, 
or the isolated individual and an inclusive humanity. This 
provoked the problem of altruism. In close connection with 
this ethical readjustment of man to the world appears an- 
other consideration: the moralistic one. Man in his purely 
naturistic capacity ignores and injures his fellows so that 
his egoism presents a significant problem; at the same time 
his egoistic acts conflict with the ideal essence of humanity 
as this invests all individuals. As a result the transition to 
altruism involves also a transmutation of natural impulses 
into an order of moralism. The alter is thus something 
more than another ego; he represents the ideal world of 
humanity, and upon him the active ego practices his virtues 
and his vices. In this way there comes about a transmuta- 
tion of naturistic and moralistic principles in man wherein 
the form of ethics becomes virtue while its content is ac- 
quired from nature as feelings; as a result the life of man 
in sense receives character, while ideals, instead of being 
empty and rationalistic, find a content in actual humanity. 

The moralistic view of man in his empirical character 
must now be adjusted to the claims of hedonism and in- 
tuitionism, and while these schools have usually held aloof 
in the determinations of humanity, it is not impossible to 
find some common ground occupied by them. Morality 
cannot be something arbitrary and as soon as one attempts 
to characterize it he finds he must have recourse to the 
naturistic side of human life. Thus the ideal form of life 
cannot be discussed apart from its actual content. Both 

129 



130 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

views of man unite in postulating a life-interest; they differ 
only when they come to relate this to man, for where he- 
donism construes this interest as something immediate and 
concrete, intuitionism makes it ultimate and abstract. And 
both assume an order of humanity in and about the indivi- 
dual, although the naturistic view of man sees only his 
individuality, while the characteristic one assumes his human 
totality. Between these opposed views appears the idea of 
virtue in its human form. Just as taste stands for a purely 
human attitude of judgment toward the feelings that one 
may experience, so virtue, instead of being abstract, involves 
the same human element of judgment directed toward man's 
activities. Apart from human interest whether surveyed in 
actuality or ideality, virtue seems incapable of determination. 

The moral ideal that inspires men and the moral law 
that rules their wills can have no significance until they have 
been related to the world of persons. Life may sink below 
it in connection with the animalistic, just as it may con- 
ceivably rise above it into something angelic, but genuine 
moral thinking takes its rise in the temperate zone of living 
humanity. Can the moral law be determined impersonally? 
Even the categorical imperative, counselling man to create 
by his conduct a universal law, suggests that that law applies 
to living human subjects. How can there be a determina- 
tion of moral law apart from the inner strivings of hu- 
manity? Creatures of sense are below it, creatures of 
spirit are above it; in itself, virtue is man's alone, in the 
same way that beauty is his. This humanistic determination 
of virtue does not forbid the elaboration of a pure ethical 
ideal; it only involves a living conception of conduct and a 
purpose for moral striving. It gives a genuine notion of 
intuition, for it involves a synthesis of outer sense with inner 
reason in a morality of ideal interest. Man does not 
abandon nature to live in an order of pure reason; he trans- 
forms the sensuous elements of his immediate environment 
into so many ideals. 

But where the root of morality is found deep down 
in nature, its flower buds in the higher air of spirit, and 
the transmutation of pleasure into virtue yields virtue as 
such. Ethical science has not always been careful to 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 131 

identify its subject matter, and at times has had under dis- 
cussion a mixture of organic and inorganic moral elements. 
For this reason, opposed schools of ethics have been able 
to carry on fairly consistent discussions of the same general 
problem, because they have viewed it in different fields, one 
discovering a series of utilities, the other an order of virtues. 
In isolation, each view is false to living humanity, which is 
beyond such extremes of concrete and abstract; but in a 
synthesis of them we may find a just conception of human 
virtue. Both utilitarians and intuitionists agree that ethics 
should discuss the perfected virtues of civilization rather 
than the primitive feelings of savagery; they differ only in 
the way that they approach these virtues, for where one 
school looks upon them as acquired by man, the other re- 
gards them as native to him. In Anglo-American ethics 
this realm of virtue is made up of "commonsense morality." 
From the point of view that we have been assuming, there is 
no difficulty in asserting that the creative spirit of man can 
transmute simple affairs of sense into ideals of reason. 
Pleasure is thus changed into beauty, sensation into knowl- 
edge, and why should not impulse become moral intuition? 
Intuitional ethics usually stigmatizes the utilitarian view 
of morality heteronomous, whereby it seems to indicate that 
it is interested in the form of conduct rather than its' con- 
tent. Heteronomy is none the less morality and one may 
criticise it only when it is represented as the final phase of 
the moral life. The unfolding of humanity leads the indivi- 
dual from egoism to altruism, just as it now involves the 
passage from hedonism to heteronomy, a change from mere 
feeling to moral law. Where the moral subject first recog- 
nizes the alter as having definite ethical claims, he finally 
sees in him the essence of moral ideal now viewed heterono- 
mously. Indeed unless we place the alter in the ideal position 
of the heteronomous principle, we can give no sufficient 
reason why the ego should ever defer to him. One man is 
the same as another metaphysically, but from the moral 
standpoint the alter assumes an extra importance inasmuch 
as he symbolizes the whole world of humanity. From the 
larger standpoint of human life as a form of spiritual striv- 
ing, both altruistic and heteronomous ethics stand in the 



132 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

same position of counterpart to the ego who would other- 
wise be isolated from humanity. In itself, altruism has an 
educative value, since it prepares the individual for virtue 
in itself, by first leading him to respect virtue as the moral 
claim of another who is qualitatively like, but quantitatively 
distinct from, himself. 

2 — THE CONFLICT OVER VIRTUE 

Heteronomy advances beyond hedonism, and its develop- 
ment as an ethical theory was brought about only after a 
struggle within the ranks of the school of naturistic ethics. 
The school, therefore, has won a victory over itself and has 
learned a lesson that the intuitionist could not have taught 
it. Hobbes based modern hedonic ethics upon the principles 
of both egoism and relativism, but did not succeed in ad- 
vancing these to altruism and moralism. In the civilized 
condition of man as opposed to his warlike state of nature, 
we do observe some regard for society and the moral law, 
but its basis is only an egoistic and relative one. Hume was 
equally determined to relate moral sentiments to human 
instincts which he, in contrast to Hobbes, interprets sym- 
pathetically rather than selfishly. To base morality upon 
morality is fallacious; as Hume notes this, he adds, "An 
action must be virtuous before we can have a regard to its 
virtue," and then seeks to establish as "an undoubted maxim, 
that no action can be virtuous or morally good, unless there 
be in human nature some motive to produce it, distinct from 
the sense of its morality." (Treatise of Human Nature, 
m, 2, i). This is a calm statement of heteronomy which 
anticipates Kant's contrary argument by nearly half a cen- 
tury. From the hedonic standpoint, it may be regarded as 
an admission that pleasure alone cannot express the form of 
human conduct which, in one way or another, necessitates 
the regard for abstract virtue. 

The sincerity of this plea for a heteronomous view of the 
moral life was threatened by the heedless utterances of 
Mandeville and the pedantic conclusions of Bentham. Like 
his master, Hobbes, Mandeville finds nothing original in 
virtue ; but unlike the serious-minded philosopher who sought 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 133 

to explain the mechanics of society in a fashion which should 
be trustworthy, the author of the "Fable of the Bees" 
(cf. 2nd ed.) misapplies the logic of the "Leviathan" and 
thus falsely concludes that the regard for virtue, which no 
hedonist can lay down as a principle, was not even a method, 
but only a device on the part of artful rulers. "It is evident 
that the first rudiments of morality, broached by skillful 
politicians, to render men useful to each other as well as 
tractable, were chiefly contrived that the ambitious might 
reap the more benefit from and govern vast numbers of them 
with the greatest ease and security." Bentham's view of 
virtue is consistent with the flat hedonism laid down in the 
"Principles of Morals," but it violates some of the principles 
which human nature itself elaborates. The "Deonotology" 
brings hedonism to a climax by eliminating the regard for 
virtue altogether. "The talisman of arrogance, indolence, 
and ignorance is to be found in a single word, an authoritative 
imposture which in these pages it will be frequently neces- 
sary to unveil. It is the word 'ought' — If the use of the 
word be permissable, it ought to be banished from the vo- 
cabulary of morals." Deontology, 1834, PP» 3 I_ 3 2 -) Thus 
does the later thinker vitiate the argument of Hume, as 
Mandeville had negated Hobbes. 

Utilitarianism reveals more of a desire to adjust itself to 
living, characteristic humanity than to be consistent with the 
hedonic ideal ; and thus it seeks to assume a representative 
relation toward virtue as such. In so doing it involves the 
results of human history without adopting its process, and 
recognizes a change from mere hedonism to sheer moralism 
without assigning a sufficient reason for such a departure. 
The formulation of utilitarianism, whose principles were 
appreciated by these three opponents of moralism, found the 
school anxious to conciliate with an outwardly perfected 
morality which the elder thinkers had flouted. Mill pre- 
sumed that "the desire for virtue was not as universal, but as 
authentic a fact, as the desire for happiness." (Utilitarianism, 
Ch. iv.) How do the two stand related? By means of the 
association of ideas. Virtue, originally nothing in itself, 
becomes a means to happiness, and then is cherished for its 
own sake, just as money is first derived for what it will buy, 



134 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

but afterwards becomes an object in itself. And thus it 
comes about that things in themselves indifferent, but asso- 
ciated with others which concern the satisfaction of our 
desires, finally become objects in themselves; and so it was 
with virtue. Originally it was not desirable, but since 
it was associated with conduciveness to pleasure and protec- 
tion from pain, it became a good in itself; its heteronomy 
changing to autonomy (lb.). Virtue thus equals a for- 
gotten utility. In seeking to perfect such a program, Mill 
confines his activities to the individual and relies wholly 
upon the principle of association, and it is not strange that 
his argument is not convincing. Nevertheless, a genuine 
problem is proposed, and apparently for the first time in 
the history of ethics it is appreciated that morality is a 
metaphysical subject whose nature is not to be taken for 
granted but stands in need of theoretical explanation. What 
Mill needed for the solution of his problem was a historical 
principle which should enlarge the field of action many 
diameters; at the same time, he stood in need of a total plan 
of life, rather than a limited method of practical ethics. 
Viewed in the light of humanity's self-emancipation from 
nature, the passage from the sub-moral to the moral is cap- 
able of explanation. 

In its modified form, the utilitarian doctrine of Sidgwick 
is valuable chiefly in indicating the inability of the school to 
solve its own problems. Like Mill, Sidgwick was under 
pressure while treating the egoistic question, and found it as 
necessary to desert his own school as Mill had to abandon 
all forms of consistency ; and in the second problem which his 
school assumed, the treatment of moralism, at the hands of 
Sidgwick, is only of a suggestive nature. This latest form of 
utilitarianism cannot rest content with the static view which, 
with Bentham, submerges moralism under hedonism, nor 
with the dynamic formulation of the problem which made 
virtue the outgrowth of utility. Sidgwick takes as his point 
of departure the heteronomy of Hume, and urges 
that moralism may be unconsciously utilitarian and of a 
hedonistic influence. Unwilling to separate hedonism from 
moralism and unable to connect them by any substantial 
bond, he suggests that the two realms are united, not so 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 135 

much by a process of association, as by means of "complex 
coincidence" (Methods qf Eth. Bk. iv, Ch. in.) At the 
same time, this method does not assume that the naturistic 
and the characteristic are identical, for in the crysallized 
morality of humanity experience, Sidgwick finds only a 
"felicific tendency." (lb.) Such is the slender connection 
between the real and the ideal in hedonism. 

3 — HETERONOMY AND HUMANITY 

The entrance of moralism into the realm of naturism 
means little to the rationalistic thinker who rejoices in the 
burning, shining light of perfected morality and systematized 
ethics, but he who wishes to survey the slow process by which 
humanity has urged itself through nature toward self-perfec- 
tion can only be gratified in witnessing this new departure 
of hedonism. Viewed naturally from below, it tends to 
invest virtue with living significance and indicates an ad- 
vance in morality comparable to the postulate of altruism. 
The reluctance with which pure hedonism makes these 
admissions, in contrast as it is with the anxiety of utilitarian- 
ism to explain and adopt both altruism and moralism, shows 
with what an effort humanity seeks to release itself from 
nature. Thus is the spell of nature broken and, in his 
progress toward humanity, man makes consistent use of 
the newly acquired otherness of altruism and hedonism. All 
morality is relative to humanity, and ethics is but a means, 
though an indispensable one, by which it is realized. Em- 
pirical relativism makes virtue subordinate to happiness; 
idealistic relativism reduces both the moral and the hedonic 
to the claims of perfect humanity. Both hedonism and 
rigorism fail to survey man comprehensively, and the result 
of their one-sidedness is this conflict between egoism and 
altruism, autonomy and heteronomy. Happiness, instead of 
assuming a modest place in the whole life of humanity, is 
made the central issue, for where one view considers it 
everything the other regards it as nothing. The immediate 
side of man's nature deserves recognition, and it cannot 
be overlooked that, as humanity was once wholly hedonic, 
this trait will ever survive in the total striving for human 



i 3 6 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

selfhood and worldhood. It is happiness which is relative, 
not morality; the absolute is spiritual humanity. 

Virtues vary in no arbitrary fashion, but according to 
the continuous plan of human striving, which brings about 
the organization of certain types of moral excellence. In 
this manner, it comes about that, when man is upon the 
plane of nature, his ideals are not purely naturistic, and 
while his atmosphere is that of sense, he is not wholly he- 
donic. Individual prudence and benevolence toward. society 
are not the only norms which decorate the theory of eudae- 
monism; temperance and courage, which were among the 
cardinal virtues, are involved in a view of life which has at 
heart the material interest of individual and race. Hu- 
manity does not disdain to dwell with those who, in a 
primitive age live close to nature, or with them that in our 
advanced civilization are the people of the pavement. Paint- 
ing, which, shows how humanity is studying itself, is not 
pledged to such examples of rafinnement as are found in 
court and drawing-room; peasants and beggars have their 
place in the studio; and, perhaps, when art would show 
how inevitable is the hold of nature upon man, and yet 
how victorious is humanity over its material fate, it has no 
better medium than that of genre painting. Philosophy can 
do no less and in the spirit of a sympathetic humanism it 
may find indelible traces of developing spiritual life through 
these crude mediums. 

4 — THE RELATIVITY OF THE GOOD 

By reason of the presence of these hedonic virtues, the 
argument for relativism is made more plausible than in the 
case of other moral ideals like veracity and honesty. One 
should be temperate and courageous, not for the sake of these 
virtues as such, or by reason of any special moral sense, but 
because the prudent and brave courses of conduct are ne- 
cessary to human welfare in both the one and the many. 
Such is the hedonic argument which modern ethics has re- 
duced to a consistent heteronomy. When other virtues, 
which belong to a higher plane of human striving, are sub- 
jected to analysis, it becomes difficult to argue in a heter- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 137 

onomous and hedonic fashion, inasmuch as these moral and 
mental ideals seem to have a value in themselves. Thus 
veracity may have its utilitarian place in the world, since 
society needs truth for its intercourse, yet truth is so vast 
and impersonal that one feels compelled to urge it for its 
own sake. Honesty plays the part of an economic utility and 
yet we feel safer when we raise it above the market and 
make of it an ideal excellence to be pursued for its own 
value. Where benevolence can never be purely autonomous, 
justice can never be thoroughly heteronomous. The only 
constant is endless humanity with its spiritual life. 

Heteronomy is less than humanism ; pleasure is inferior to 
personality. To understand man who experiences these 
pleasures and pains, his being must be surveyed sub specie 
humani. Then it will appear that desire, as a psychic 
combination of will and affection, is magnified many dia- 
meters by virtue of the fact that it is man's desire, put forth 
for the purpose of human realization, while pleasure is 
surcharged with potency by reason of its reception into a 
human soul. Human spontaneity thus transmutes desire 
into an extra-psychical force, while human sensitivity acts 
as an alembic to transform pleasure into a more than a 
natural product. Relativity now seems to stand on the 
side of hedonism rather than of intuitionism ; for pleasure, 
instead of being a constant, assumes the form of a variable 
which has its basis in the permanency of human existence. 
As it has been shown from our examination of the hedonic in 
man, pleasure consists in some form of activity. Here, it 
needs only be pointed out that the assertion of humanity 
within man is the real force which is active upon the plane 
of nature and in the atmosphere of hedonism; no artificial 
utilitarianism of the present can obscure this obvious teaching 
of history. With primitive man, the hedonic is to be ex- 
pected, and since man can never be wholly independent of 
nature, his life will ever bear an ineradicable trace of 
eudaemonism. 

Through the enveloping medium of the world of hu- 
manity, hedonic benefits receive an unwonted character. In 
response to benevolence, the ego is not presenting pleasure 
to the alter, but in the half-conscious sense of a single and 



i 3 8 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

indivisible humanity, one soul furthers the advancement of 
another. The presenting of gifts among friends and acts 
of charity in connection with the ill-favored have a symbolic 
significance and appeal to the totality of man's being. Be- 
nevolence becomes a virtue, not only because of certain 
empirical needs of individuals, but by reason of intelligible 
values which reside in human souls as such. He who thus 
aids another, advances humanity in its progress toward self- 
hood, and no matter how definitely perceptible and imme- 
diately practical that service may be, hedonism can never 
circumscribe it. Here is another reason for ascribing rela- 
tivity to happiness rather than to virtue, for surely an animal 
function like enjoyment cannot remain the same in the 
whole range of life where the fineness and complexity of the 
nervous system exhibits such marked degrees of difference. 
Man's pleasure is man's pleasure; his humanity affects his 
mind as well as his body. 

Upon direct analysis, the problem of moralism seems to 
be too complicated for this simple statement of the asso- 
ciationist, too profound for the bland solution of the 
utilitarian. We may grant that there is some connection 
between hedonism and moralism, for if that be wanting we 
shall have no ostensible method by which to relate the primi- 
tive period of naturism to the more advanced ideals of 
characteristic ethics. To find the place where heteronomy 
becomes autonomy, the point where the co-efficient of moral 
expansion changes sign, is beyond the possibilities of the 
associational school. The first error consists in the state- 
ment, according to which the "moral" life exists and exerts 
itself in a purely heteronomous or hedonic manner, for it is 
almost impossible to conceive of men as living in such an 
instinctive fashion as though his existence were purely 
"entomological", as Balzac would express it. Then, the 
finished argument which derives or demonstrates disinter- 
ested autonomous conduct proves too much, for our human 
ideal is not the abstract rectitude of rationalism, but a living 
sense of worth. Thus we are not called upon to pass in 
review the transition from concrete hedonism to abstract 
moralism, both of which conditions are alien to humanity, 
but have only to account for the fact that man has learned 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 139 

to place an ideal value upon conduct. 

Nietzche's criticism* of the English psychologists, to whom, 
as he admits, we are indebted for the only theory we have 
of the origin of the concept "good", tends to set the problem 
of moralism in the reverse order. This seems to be due to 
the fact that in Nietzsche's mind the term "good" does not 
apply to the unselfish act, but on the contrary it connotes 
something egoistic. Hence he protests that the idea of 
goodness was not invented by those to whom goodness was 
shown, but on the contrary it was a characterization which 
the high-minded applied to themselves to indicate their 
power and nobility. It was a decision handed down from 
an aristocratic source, not a custom which grew up upon a 
democratic soil. (Genealogy of Morals, I. S. 2). The 
primitive man in the person of the Aryan, the Greek, the 
original German accustomed himself to believe in his own 
superiority, while he taught the weaker ones whom he 
subjugated to consider themselves bad, because of their 
weakness. The philological explanation of "good" and 
"bad" which Nietzsche gives is so faulty that its suggestive- 
ness is well nigh lost to view, but on the philosophical side 
he shows his strength in subsuming all moral truth under 
the category of value. At the same time he constantly re- 
minds us that within the heart of humanity great changes 
can take place whereby the moral ideal may undergo trans- 
valuation. 

From our point of view, which reveals to us the spiritual 
order within which humanity exists and works, we have 
nothing to fear from the transmutation of naturism into 
moralism. Humanity itself contains the explanation of 
morality and, as we shall when we come to examine the 
concepts of characteristic ethics, conscience and rectitude, 
freedom and duty are to be resolved into so many states of 
inner humanity. As human norms they cannot be deduced 
from nature nor reduced to reason, but must be considered 
as the structure which humanity assumes in its striving after 
self-realization. For this reason, mere pleasure in its he- 
donic form is as far removed from the moral ideal as sheer, 
unrelated virtue, and where morality in order to exist must 
set up some relation to the world, its connection with man 



i 4 o VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

must be consonant with his inner nature. Hence what we 
have been calling heteronomy is only the general truth of 
humanism in morality. 



V 

NATURISM AS EUDAEMONISM 

The claims of naturistic ethics have not been thoroughly 
satisfied by a hedonic theory which, in seeking to explain 
the striving of man toward humanity, has advanced from 
pleasure to utility, from utility to the preservation of the 
species. In all this, hedonism has not waited to ask what 
man is for, nor has its zeal for happiness allowed it to inquire 
wherein his well-being consists. Not consistent with itself, 
hedonism has been similarly unable to relate its norms to the 
world of nature which it aspires to represent. For this 
reason of insufficiency another view of man's life in the 
world of time and space is made necessary, and eudaemonism 
assumes the burden of proof at the place where hedonism 
lays it down. Eudaemonism seeks to justify the naturism 
of human existence by raising, first of all, the question of 
immediacy , whereby it seeks to show that man was not meant 
to depart from nature for the sake of dwelling in a deri- 
vative world of culture. This concerns the form of human 
happiness, whose content is discussed in a manner unknown 
to hedonism; happiness is found to consist in some form of 
activity. Thus in a dual manner, eudaemonism discusses 
the problem of life and aims to show how man, in the 
immediacy of his nature-life is supposed to realize and con- 
tent himself with activity. Because it is so thorough, the 
eudaemonistic argument is far more serious than the he- 
donic one ; if it be correct, man's conflict with nature for the 
sake of a pure humanity is unnecessary, if not in vain. 

I THE FORM OF HAPPINESS AS IMMEDIACY 

The spirit of eudaemonism is that of contemplation, in 
the course of which it seeks mere contact with nature, and 
does not consent to submit to its material interests. In its 

141 



i 4 2 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

enthusiasm for nature, hedonism was not in a condition to 
approach its idol in an acceptable fashion, and it failed to do 
justice either to itself or to its subject. True naturism is 
still to be sought by means of a method which does not 
calculate pleasures and pains, or reduce natural benefits to 
principles of utility and preservation. Man is still unac- 
counted for, while nature is not yet possessed. For this rea- 
son, the eudaemonistic method becomes necessary in the ad- 
justment of man to the universe, and it seems to present a 
more promising plan, inasmuch as it looks upon nature, not 
hedonically, but aesthetically, as though it were the shadow 
of humanity. It appears, then, that man is hardly capable 
of a concrete life, for his sensations ascend to ideas and 
his passions pass into sentiments. Man in his humanity is 
so over-naturized that he cannot be held down to the plan 
of utilitarianism, and in the presence of his victorious self- 
assertion the stolid maxims of this calculating school are ill- 
adapted to the genius of humanity. To be free and to feel 
free from the plodding pleasures of a concrete experience is 
an impulse which redeems man from hedonic fate, for he 
is too active a creature to rest content with the passive re- 
ception of pleasure, and too much a lover of power to exhaust 
his energies in the quest of happiness as such. There is in 
him an unconscious and involuntary form of aspiration that 
habitually draws him away from the concreteness of animal 
existence, and while this may be only a negative idealism, 
which, in the case of art, delights in the unrealities of drama 
and romance, it is sufficient to show that a given form of 
existence, with an accompanying quality of pleasure, is not 
enough for a humanistic creature whose destiny lies beyond 
the borders of the phenomenal world-order. To content a 
developed form of existence whose mental life is vast enough 
to view nature in its totality, is beyond the power of the 
sense-world. 

Man is not so much hedonic as he is humanistic, and in 
the quest of life he cares not so much for pleasure as for the 
thrill of existence which contact with the world affords. In 
this search for consciousness of humanity, pain will do as 
well as pleasure, just as life is represented by tragedy as 
well as by comedy, if not better. Just as the hedonic law 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 143 

points out how pleasure and pain are relative to the de- 
mands of life, whertin one indicates benefit and the other 
harm, so the general principle of humanity, which postulates 
man as striving onward from nature to culture, reveals how 
incidental are these simple feelings in the general program of 
life. The hedonic in man can never be denied, nor should 
one care to ignore it, but it can be asserted that the total 
interest of life is greater than any search for happiness, just 
as the positing of humanity is not due to any felicific in- 
clination or utilitarian consequence. The animal has pleas- 
ure-pain; man alone has happiness, because only he has 
world-position and destiny. And it is the fate of man to 
transcend happiness for the sake of achieving humanity; with 
the beast there is no escape from the hedonic law of the 
organism ; with man there is always the possibility of choosing 
whether he will ally himself with the feeling or not. Thus 
he may refuse happiness and resolve to suffer, as many a 
noble soul has done; and it is only the possibility of unified, 
unlimited humanity in the individual that creates such a 
spectacle. Hence it is not the quivering of the flesh, but 
the thrill of the spirit that characterizes human enjoyment. 
That form of contemplation which kept the gods calm 
and suffered not the graces to be ruffled, partook of a cer- 
tain naivete due to innocence of any internal conflict. 
Pleasure and pain they felt without weighing their hedonic 
values, while desire failed to draw them away from the 
mean. Modern eudaemonism seeks immediacy in a pathetic 
spirit as if it were a lost art, and, indeed, one may be 
astonished at such a movement as Hellenism which worked 
out a certain philosophy of life without appealing to duty or 
indulging in doubt. A modern like Winckelmann feels his 
estrangement from nature when he beholds the memorials of 
classicism, while Schiller returns to Pagan poetry as to a 
lost paradise. To most moderns the path to immediate 
eudaemonism is blocked by certain spiritual scruples, which 
persuade us that we must rend ourselves in doubt before we 
can believe, and suffer the pangs of repentance before we 
can become upright. We seek after a second world without 
having appreciated the first one, and now we are wondering 
whether the remote future will commend our Gothic striving 



i 4 4 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and romantic suffering. Will the "music of the future" find 
the world of spirit in Wagner's world of tone, and admit 
that a superman like Siegfried stands in need of salvation? 
Have we not been too lyrical in our pessimism as we recalled 
how Schopenhauer loved to play the flute? In the adjust- 
ment of our spiritual needs to objective facts, our philosophy 
of life has been like a canvas by Delacroix, which endeavored 
to find in the lines and colors of nature little more than a 
picture of human emotion. Our romanticism has led us 
away from nature and its eudaemonistic life. 

Hellenism was forever delivered from that sense of striv- 
ing which pervades our morals and makes us keen to consci- 
ence and alive to duty. With its aristocratic ideals, it never 
sought the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but 
pursued the perfection of the superior man whose culture 
has come down to us. In the form of an objective eudae- 
monism, the sense of the immediate acted as ground and 
motive for classicism, which was as far removed from hedonic 
calculus as from rigoristic compunction. If the utilitarian 
method is obvious, and human intuitions are intuitive, it is 
remarkable that the Greeks were so wanting in the per- 
ception of a moral sense or the claims of benevolence. 
Pleasure had not been put in a precarious position by sub- 
jecting it to analysis, hence what in modern thought has 
resulted in hedonism was then naive and eudaemonistic, 
qualities which are destined to cling to human nature every- 
where. Stoics and Epicureans, who endeavored to reduce 
life to particular methods, produced an inverted eudae- 
monism in the form of ataraxy-apathy. 

In a metaphysical fashion, ancient ethics was fitted for 
eudaemonism by reason of the fact that it ever postulated an 
objective good rather than a subjective duty. To such a 
conception the whole dialectic of Plato was consecrated, and 
the idea of the good became the highest knowledge (Repub. 
505), while as an ideal it was to be realized in the best- 
ordered state (lb. 462). The good is likewise associated 
with both knowledge and happiness, and in such a manner 
that there is both wisdom in the life of pleasure and pleasure 
in the life of wisdom (Philebus, 20). So compact is the 
classic conception of the ideal in life that it is not divided 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 145 

against itself, even when marked by the lower principle of 
utility, which plays its part as a criterion in the ideal state, 
whereby it is concluded that the most beneficial marriages 
are the most holy (Repub. 457-458). It is the same 
principle that leads Plato to discourse so bitterly against the 
artists, who deal, not in reality, but in imitation, whereby 
the painter is judged to be inferior to the carpenter (lb. 597). 
With such favorable recommendations, the life of eudae- 
monia could not fail to impress classicism which reduced it 
to an optimistic type of conduct. In the unity of classic 
realism, antiquity never found it necessary to create a good 
that already existed in itself, or to strive after virtues which 
appeared naturally as attributes of the single good that 
pervaded the universe. The good was finished product and 
virtue a likely tendency ; and, in the case of an all-embracing 
cosmos, man could only acquiesce in the genial bent of nature. 

2 HAPPINESS AS POSSESSION OF THE GOOD 

In contrast with this unified and naturistic view of the 
macrocosm, which had instilled into the heart of the ancient a 
perfect eudaemonia knowing neither doubt nor repentance, 
arose the modern culture-conflict which set man in opposi- 
tion to nature and in conflict with himself. Not only happi- 
ness itself, but the approach to it became a burning question 
for both intellect and will. In the midst of this problem, 
which was quite foreign to the purely hedonic composition 
of happiness out of individual pleasures, appeared certain 
traits of human nature which must be reckoned with; hence 
arose pairs of leading questions: Does happiness consist in 
the possession of the desired object, or the mere pursuit of it? 
This question involved the whole difference betwen classic 
paganism and Christian romanticism. Is happiness to be 
found in contemplation by the intellect, or in conquest by the 
will? As antiquity had laid its emphasis upon the contem- 
plative possession of the world according to the good, so 
modernity assumed the other point of view and decided in 
favor of active pursuit as the only safe means to happiness. 
The whole setting of the problem was further marked by a 
view of life according to immediacy or with respect to 



146 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

remoteness. Hence the subject of eudaemonia had to ask 
himself whether his well-being consisted in the intellectual 
contemplation of the world of immediacy, or the volitional 
conquest of the world of remoteness. 

While Hellenism had set the standard of genuine eudae- 
monism, the modern was not disposed to abandon the quest 
of what seemed to be a lost art; although he used his own 
methods in investigating the question before him. At times 
he has been a classicist, at times a romanticist, and again a 
pure naturist. This condition of human consciousness showed 
itself early in the nineteenth century in the art of David, 
Delacroix and the Barbizon School. Where the classic 
landscape was intellectual and seemed bent upon repre- 
senting the ideal forms of nature and humanity, the ro- 
mantic scene was suggestive of the irrational will which per- 
verted the natural order and made the landscape reflect the 
emotions of humanity. The Barbizon artists revealed the 
fact that, apart from tradition, man in his humanity may 
contemplate nature in all its immediacy; and the atmosphere 
of that art which was established by Millet, Corot, and 
Rousseau was one of the grand totality which envelops both, 
nature and humanity. In such a genuine return to nature as 
appeared on the edge of Fontainebleau forest, the world of 
humanity appeared raised above conflict and free from all 
distraction, while the sanity of our own age appeared in 
forms both charming and convincing. 

While the two general types of eudaemonia are easily 
established in the abstract, the liquid composition of hu- 
manity in general and the contingent qualities of the in- 
dividual render it difficult to adjust the leading thinkers to 
the clear divisions. At the outset, one must appreciate the 
great difference between Aristotle and Bacon, although 
when we attempt to indicate this, likeness will appear as 
strikingly as contrast. We should expect the ancient to 
perfect his view of eudaemonia in terms of contemplation, 
but this he does not do without introducing an element of 
energism ; and we want the modern to fulfill the promises of 
his anti-Aristotelianism and abandon the ideal of contem- 
plation for that of conquest; but, as we shall see, his ideal 
of life and learning is sometimes expressed in perfect Aris- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 147 

totclian terminology. Since it was Bacon who pointed out 
that, with respect to actual progress, we are the true ancients, 
it is permissible for him to involve certain elements of the 
so-called antiquity in his own speculations. With here an 
Athenian age of culture, and there an Italian Renaissance 
behind the thinker, it is not extraordinary that the methods 
of reflection should cross and indicate more than one point 
of likeness. Yet it needs the influence of more than one 
modern to counterbalance the activity of this fortunate 
Pagan. 

In connection with Aristotle's finished view of human 
happiness which was implicit in classicism, we may note the 
peculiar conditions of culture which furthered such a method 
of idealizing life. Coming after the age of Pericles with its 
perfections in culture and civilization, both Plato and Aris- 
totle seem possessed of the complacent feeling that they 
are living in a finished world toward which their own duty 
is merely one of ordering and comprehending. Such a con- 
viction shows itself in Plato's theory of the state and 
Aristotle's view of art, wherein what had been done in 
Sparta and Athens was the counterpart of what was thought 
by these philosophers. The limitations of such a reductive 
method appears later in the particular case of Aristotle, 
who with all his genuine interest in nature is not to be 
shaken from his classic conviction that reality has been 
reached, even though Alexander opens new fields of research 
in the study of nature. To Aristotle, the dead Pericles was 
more than the living Alexander. The retrospective habit 
of Greek speculation precluded any such principle of dis- 
covery as Bacon, an opponent of Aristotelianism, advocated 
in modern times. Modern naturism with, first, a new 
physical world and, then, a new biological one before it, 
resorted to the creative will rather than the contemplative 
intellect and, confronted by no hope of possession, it con- 
secrated its energies to pursuit and discovery. 

Yet this intellectual activity has never been sufficient to 
carry man beyond nature. We may conquer nature by 
obeying her in the study of science, but we are again con- 
quered by the application of science to industry. Science 
contains no suggestion of the emancipation to be found in 



148 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

art, and in a modern age where our physical and political 
theories tend to liberate the individual from nature and 
society, the spectacle of a whole man who lives his life in 
his own way has been a subject of wonder among poets from 
Schiller to Sudermann. The ancient who looked upon the 
human microcosm as a part of nature and regarded "man 
as by nature a political animal" — endowed man with more 
unity and completeness than does the advanced thought 
of the present. For this reason, the. antique ideal of imme- 
diacy toward nature makes its appeal to Shakespeare who 
invests the romantic with sufficient realism to permit its com- 
parison with the antique standard. It is for just this element 
of Aristotelianism that Tolstoi has recently criticised Shake- 
speare, as one who upheld healthy activity and the golden 
mean; or an ideal of "action at all costs, the absence of all 
ideals, moderation in everything, the conservation of the 
forms of life once established, and the end justifying the 
means." (On Shakespeare, Pt. vi). Thus is it possible 
to perceive in moderns like Shakespeare and Goethe the 
idealization of immediacy and a life of self-limiting activity; 
the greatness of the genius here displayed consisted in con- 
tracting the infinite into convenient proportions and in re- 
storing remote interests to the domain of immediate life. 
The world is changed to a stage and the longer drama of 
humanity is so condensed that it resembles Hamlet's play 
within the play. 

3 — the "work of contemplation" 

In checking the hasty arguments of hedonism we have 
already had to employ the careful psychology of Aristotle 
(cf. supra p. 99) ; we must now survey his own theory in a 
more constructive fashion as expressing the ideals of eudae- 
monia. It might appear that one who belonged to such a 
pleasure-seeking and life-loving race would avail himself 
of such arguments as hedonism is likely to offer to its devo- 
tees; but Aristotle abstains from any coarse contact with 
the world of sense. As Plato had made it plain that he 
did not wish his ideal man confounded with the system 
(Philebus, 21), so Aristotle refuses to regard ethics in any 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 149 

anti-hedonic fashion, inasmuch as moral virtue concerns it- 
self with pleasure and pain — irepl rjSovas k<u Xwras kcrrlv rj 
rjdiicq apery (Eth. Nicom. Bk. 11, Ch. m). But as one 
who was a Hellenist inwardly, Aristotle does not fail to 
make the chief good to consist in a happiness which is 
beyond pleasure and pain; and which leaves nothing to be 
done or desired; and with an artistic freedom which touches 
life lightly, he suggests that "We ought to feel in fact toward 
pleasures as did the old counsellors toward Helen" (Iliad, 
in, 156-157), an aesthetic attitude commended by Burke and 
Lessing. The hedonic zest of Paris and the rigorous re- 
sistance of Hector are reduced to the golden mean of contem- 
plation wherein aur&prcs is the ledaing element. (Eth. 
Nicom. Bk. 11, Ch. ix.) 

The consistent eudaemonism of Aristotle must be dis- 
tinguished, not only from hedonism, but from voluntarism, 
with which the master of peripatetic philosophy seems to 
identity himself. The opening chapter of the Nicomachean 
Ethics seems to place the author among our modern volun- 
tarists; for, as a peripatetic, he contends for activity as the 
source of happiness. His definition states that "happiness 
consists of a certain energy of the soul according to virtue — 
^ evSatfAovta ifo^f}*: evipyeva tis kcll apeqvT* (Bk. l 3 Ch. VII ) ; 
while the fuller account of the subject makes the distinction 
"between conceiving of the chief good as in possession or as in 
use; in other words, as a mere state, or as an energy." (lb. 
Ch. vi ). The energistic view ever impresses Aristotle as 
the one best calculated to express the sense of eudaemonia. 
Now this may seem to draw the peripatetic out of classicism 
into romanticism, but the exercise of the will is ever condi- 
tioned by the golden mean and subordinated to the intellect, 
for the ancient idealist was in favor of such work only as 
could be carried on in moderation and with intelligence. 
Aristotle's eudaemonism seems inconsistent because its op- 
position to hedonism in the first book leads the author to 
emphasize the energistic, while the constructive portion of 
the work in the last one affirms with perfect balance that 
active happiness consists in contemplation, and the earlier 
doctrine of ivipyva — ev&u/novta gives way to a compact idea 
of OeapTiicrj. 



150 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Finally, the peripatetic conception of eudaemonia reveals 
its subordination to the intellect when it claims that pos- 
session is better than pursuit; for, says he, "it is reasonable 
to suppose that the employment of wisdom is more pleasant 
to those who have mastered than to those who are yet seeking 
for it" (Bk. x, Ch. vi). This energy of intellect is looked 
upon as the highest possible form of happiness, so that the 
gods are to be pictured, not as exercising moral vigor, but 
as manifesting contemplative energy, to which state of per- 
fection man is advised to attain. "Now if from a living being 
you take away action, what remains but contemplation? So 
then the energy of the gods, eminent in blessedness, will be 
one apt for contemplative speculation; and of all human 
energies, that will have the greatest capacity for happiness 
which is nearest akin to this" (lb.)- Hence the view, 
which, in the critical part of the work, identified evSaifiovui 
and evepyeta, now makes cvSai/xovia equivalent to dewpiTKy; 
and where it had previously indicated "three lines of life," 
comparable to the triple division adapted here and there 
from the Sankhya philosophy to Schiller, it places above 
the life of sensual enjoyment and public life, the "life of 
contemplation" (lb. Bk. I, Ch. in). 

The eudaemonism of the modern Renaissance was not 
wholly different from that of Athens, and Bacon did not 
fail to comment with favor upon the genius of Aristotle, 
whose intellectualism he prefers to the works of conquest 
carried on by Alexander (Advancement of Learning, vn 10- 
u). In general, Bacon's argument follows a course di- 
rectly the reverse of Aristotle's, in that where the ancient 
thinker had first made concessions in favor of energism 
only to conclude in behalf of contemplative energy, the 
modern is ready to grant provisionally the advantages of 
the purely intellectual life, but finally renders his verdict in 
favor of the practical as opposed to the theoretical. It was in 
the application of this utilitarian test of knowledge that 
Bacon originated the term "culture" (Advancement of 
Learning, n. xix, 2, etc). While the modern, who was 
filled with the Hellenism of the Renaissance, was not suffi- 
ciently divorced from antiquity to make the strident distinc- 
tions peculiar to the Enlightenment, he was led to contrast 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 151 

humanity with nature, whereby he points out that it is the 
vocation of man to supersede nature by means of science. 
Bacon, who originally was so inspired by the contemplative 
life of antiquity as to quote Virgil's maxim, 

Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
does not leave the subject until he has elaborated a watch- 
word of his own — scientia est potentia; and by this he indi- 
cates that while contemplation may bring felicity, genuine 
happiness comes from that culture which rules nature by 
obeying her laws. 

In portraying the dignity of knowledge, Bacon makes 
use of proofs divine and human, which at first led him, in a 
purely peripatetic manner, to demonstrate the superiority of 
what, in perfect Aristotelian phraseology, he calls "the work 
of contemplation." As Aristotle had so naively referred to 
the contemplative deities, so Bacon finds material for argu- 
ment in Biblical tradition. The seventh day in which God 
rested and "contemplated his own works was blessed above 
all the days wherein he did effect and accomplish them," 
while the first acts of man in paradise consisted in viewing 
and naming God's creatures. So the offering of Abel, who 
led the contemplative life of the shepherd, was more ac- 
ceptable than that of Cain the husbandman. Moses was 
famed for Egyptian learning, Job for natural philosophy, 
and Solomon for wisdom, while the Saviour Himself first 
showed His power by subduing the doctors of the law, before 
He performed His miracles in nature (Adv. of Learning, 
vi). On the human side, mythology shows how superior 
over rulers and lawgivers were the inventors of new arts 
and sciences, who were Gods where the others were demi- 
Gods. In human history, likewise, it appears that, in the 
instances of Socrates and Xenophon, Aristotle and Alex- 
ander, Cicero and Caesar, learning has an influence both in 
times of war and peace (lb. vn). 

Bacon's later work, Novum Organum, renders the work 
of conquest superior to that of contemplation, and hence it 
becomes a mere characteristic modern production. The 
ruling ideal is that of culture, which term had already been 
introduced in his "globe of the intellectual world" — 
Advancement of Learning (Bk. n., xxii) ; but the 



152 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Novum Organum inquires concerning the utility of knowl- 
edge, which is found to consist in the subjugation of nature 
by science. With such a purpose, science no longer consists 
in furnishing individuals with weapons for their warfare 
one with another, but equips humanity in its oneness for its 
intellectual conflict with nature. For this reason, the idea 
of utility must be understood eudaemonistically, not hedonic- 
ally, as applying to the total interests of life, not the par- 
ticular ones. Man's calling consists in ruling nature, first, 
by discovering her laws; then, by obeying them; hence, in 
Bacon's plan, man really returns to nature although in no 
such irrational manner as Rousseau in his rhapsodies had 
pointed out. Immediacy connects itself with utility, and 
the work of contemplation yields to the work of conquest. 

4 — THE CONTENT OF HAPPINESS IN ACTIVITY 

The way for the positive interpretation of eudaemonia 
had already been prepared by Aristotle, who found happi- 
ness to consist in energy; by Bacon, who subordinated knowl- 
edge to its practical culture or natural forces; by Rousseau, 
who was opposed to pure art and science in their antipathy to 
the life of immediate activity. While the question is still 
one which concerns immediacy of contact with nature, the 
particular way of establishing it now comes under discus- 
sion, and the respective claims of intellect and will must be 
considered. Is man happy when he thinks correctly, or 
when he acts consistently? From the dawn of his culture, 
the Aryan has been in doubt about his intellectualism, al- 
though he has steadily maintained that the mental process 
is sufficient to guide man to his humanity and give him 
happiness. In the Bhagavad-Gita, which combines the 
theory of Sankhya-speculation with the theory of Yoga- 
practice, the conflict between knowing and doing is clearly 
seen. Here it is said, "As a kindled fire makes its fuel into 
ashes, so the fire of knowledge makes into ashes all works" 
(Ch. iv) ; there it is suggested that "Without undertaking 
works no man may possess worklessness" (Ch. in). Of the 
two, the Yoga method of work seems more eudaemonistic. 
To-day the claims of the will are stronger because of the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 153 

entrance of Semitism into the problem of life. 

In this way has arisen a eudaemonistic utilitarianism 
which exalts action for the sake of the worker, not the work. 
It is culture in the volitional form of discipline, made more 
pertinent by the skepticism which has ever hovered over 
our modern thought. Perhaps the life of intellectual con- 
templation were better in itself, but with the failure or reason 
to reach reality, and with a chasm created between thought 
and thing, the will is appealed to by the human subject who 
sees no other way to realize his humanity. Culture involves 
a certain form of mental courage that refuses the myrrh and 
wine with which the fatigue of the will would stupefy man ; 
hence the maxim, sapere aude. Where the theory of knowl- 
edge wonders whether man can know, the theory of culture 
inquires whether he really wants to know. Culture involves 
a conflict with nature and the elaboration of an independent 
spiritual order; hence man hesitates to abandon the con- 
venient natural order and adjust his being to such an unreal 
thing as the world of humanity. The intimate system of 
things may not satisfy spiritual longing or wholly contain 
humanity in its endless striving, but it affords scope for or- 
dinary human endeavor and presents opportunity for that 
which man needs — immediate activity. 

Before Bacon's theory of culture had been begun, the 
skepticism of Montaigne had yielded a practical maxim of 
life which, if it did not oppose an intellectualistic form of con- 
duct, set up in resolute fashion the ideal of work. Man was 
meant for labor — "nous sommes nayr pour agir" — con- 
cludes the skeptic, who further expresses the wish that 
death may find him in the garden planting his cabbages — 
je veux quon agisse et quon along e les offices de la vie, taut 
quon peult; et que la mort me ireuve plantant mes choulx, 
mais non chalant d'elle, et encore plus de mon jardin im- 
parfaict (Essais, I., XIX ). Such was hardly the expected 
conclusion on the part of one who, active in the midst of 
the Renaissance, could hardly be satisfied with science as it 
had thus far perfected itself; and the watch-word is more 
comprehensible as a general confession of faith in salvation by 
practical works. At a later period, when the Enlightenment 
had begun to exhaust the possibilities of the understanding, 



154 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Voltaire's parallel comment upon the life of labor as op- 
posed to the life of learning is more convincingly expressed 
in connection with the problem of optimism, yet it must be 
observed that his language agrees almost verbally with his 
skeptical predecessor. 

Voltaire contrasts the ideal of immediacy with that of 
scientific separation from nature, just as he institutes a 
comparison between the intellect and will, as functions whose 
exercise is calculated to satisfy the demands of the heart. 
His conclusion is drawn against culture, and his optimism is 
the eudaemonia of occupying labor which leaves no room 
for regret. Such was the burden of "Candide," in whose 
final paragraphs it is pointed out how man was put in the 
Garden of Eden in order that he might work, although 
Voltaire does not observe, with Bacon, that this original 
occupation was the "work of contemplation." The advice 
which is given in this connection is both pessimistic and 
optimistic, for it decides against reason before it approves 
of the will as a source of happiness. To make life bearable 
one must work without thinking — " travaillons sans raissoner: 
cest le seul moyens de rendre la vie supportable'* Yet this 
does not remove all possibility of happiness, inasmuch as the 
life of labor is not without reward; hence the injunction 
to cultivate the garden — "il faut cultiver notre ]ardin." 
Such an ideal is characteristic of our modern eudaemonism, 
which distrusts all activity save that of a practical nature. 

A similar faith in immediacy and the practical application 
of it is instilled by Goethe's ideal histories of Faust and 
Wilhelm Meister. Thus was developed a literary utili- 
tarianism so foreign to the traditional theories of British 
moralists that its importance in the history of ethics has 
been overlooked. The genial paganism of Goethe made it 
impossible for him to accept Kant's categorical imperative, 
as Schiller sought to do, just as it led him to delineate a 
character well-balanced and of satisfaction to himself. In 
the two-fold instance of Faust and Wilhelm Meister, the 
poet endeavors to show how necessary it is to devote one's 
self to some task of immediate value to mankind; a truth 
which applies to the average man of the novel and the 
genius of the poem. Both heroes seek satisfaction in self- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 155 

love and both works have their thoroughgoing egoistic por- 
tions; yet both concluded with altruism, wherein the gilded 
youth of Wilhelm turns to objective, practical work, while 
the gifted Faust consummates his career by the strange occu- 
pation of draining a swamp to make a town more habitable. 
In such occupations the vagueness and subjectivity of mere 
intellectualism yields to precise objective doing, so that the 
deed, not the thought, is man's salvation. The second part 
of Faust relates the marriage of the hero to Helen of Troy 
and that with no suggestion of mesalliance ; it was an incident 
designed to show how possible it is to unite romantic and 
classic forms of culture. Faust itself does add to the 
Hellenic sense of immediacy and limitation the modern ideal 
of labor, but in such a way as to make for realism rather 
than romanticism. Schlegel overloked the utilitarian trend 
of Meister for the sake of the free creativeness otherwise 
displayed in the romance {Jug end Schriften, Bd. 11, S. 165, 
et Seq.), a tendency carried out in the author's own work, 
"Lucinde." On the other hand, Novalis' opposition to the 
Meister-ideal appears in "Heinrich von Ofterdingen," an- 
other search for the blue flower, a work which sets aside 
the ideal of an immediate for that of a remote interest. 
Goethe's conception is thus neither classic nor romantic, 
but realistic. 

Such views have their value, and in the face of the 
negative ideals of rationalism they are sure to command 
some assent. The individual is not pilloried upon an ideal, 
but is allowed the free development of his powers as a 
creature of sense. His instincts are centralized and thus 
checked by being directed toward a practical goal the worth 
of which in its immediacy cannot be denied. The form of 
morality engendered is the positive one, which makes room 
for man qua man, and does not make him sacrifice himself to 
an abstraction, much less to another who is of like passions 
with himself. So far as content is concerned, this phase of 
utilitarianism, whence the poet flees for moral exercise in 
the sunshine of the garden, is neither egoistic nor altruistic, 
neither rigoristic nor hedonic. The hero works imperson- 
ally, inasmuch as he has relinquished thought and self- 
scrutiny, and cultivates the garden. Man was put into the 



156 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

world to dress the garden and his happiness consisted in 
this pleasant occupation; but behold the curse of humanity 
when this same labor is carried on fuori le mura. Here man 
toils by the sweat of his brow amid thorn and thistle, and 
with tears eats the bread of sorrows. He is in the world, 
not the garden; immediacy has not for him the benefits his 
thought has imagined; it will be fortunate for him if he 
sees one whom he supposes to be the Gardener. 

Upon the psychological side, the choice in favor of con- 
quest as opposed to contemplation involves the comparison 
between will and intellect. This was set up in Christendom 
by Augustine, who in aligning the problem of freedom, 
separates the will from the totality of inner consciousness 
(Civ. Dei, xiv, 6). Scholasticism, with the conflict be- 
tween Dominican and Franciscan, inquired concerning the 
superiority of intellect and will, and Duns Scotus established 
voluntarism when he advocated the supremacy of will — 
voluntas superior est intellectu. The attack upon man's 
spiritual unity was thus carried on in the light of the sensory 
and motor functions of the organism ; and in the midst of the 
several forms of dualism set up by Kant that between 
speculative and practical reason makes the distinction all the 
more thoroughgoing, just as it places Kant among the volun- 
tarists. What is the result? Two types of life are estab- 
lished; one which emphasizes the contemplative possession 
of the world in its ultimate aspect; the other which advises 
the practical pursuit of reality by way of conquest. The 
hero is either homo sapiens or homo jaciens, and life consists 
either of proof, — quod erat demontrandum — or of perform- 
ance — quod erat faciendam. Thus the modern pagan clings 
to the Hellenic ideal only upon the side of immediacy; the 
ideal of conative activity is his own. 

5 — NATURISTIC OPTIMISM 

Such is the result of the second form of naturism; it 
develops a eudaemonism which limits activity to the natural 
world of immediacy, and finally turns to the will with its 
possibilities of conquest. In the midst of this doctrine of 
life, the supremacy of nature is never lost sight of; and the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 157 

reason why contemplation does not involve an unlimited 
range is found in the feeling that happiness can come only 
as man remains within the domain of a finished order of 
things such as nature presents. The will, which is limited 
by itself alone, is similarly reduced to acceptable proportions 
by the attention which is paid to immediate occupation. 
Under such auspices man is permitted to enjoy himself in 
the consciousness of immediate reality and with the con- 
viction that life is sufficient; he is not urged to carry on a 
conflict with nature for the sake of spiritual humanity, but 
is advised to lose his endless selfhood in immediate world- 
hood. Humanity exists and operates, not as something in- 
ward and endless, but as a favored element in the all- 
embracing natural order. Man is thus taught to live with- 
out ideals and to systematize his ethics apart from categories. 
In antiquity, with its formal and plastic modes of conducting 
human life, it was a consistent attitude; within the borders 
of Christendom, where an independent humanity carries on 
its operations with outer striving and inner suffering, it is 
discordant. The atmosphere of this thinking is a healthy 
optimism, the constant accompaniment of hedonism; since 
it does not contrast nature with spirit it is not likely to dis- 
cover any imperfection in the world. Culture completes 
nature; the purely human demand for ideals will not abide 
by any calculating or contemplating utilitarianism and the 
self-centered obvious argument of and from naturism is not 
wholly convincing. To account for, in theory, and satisfy in 
the ideal, great trains of free speculation and vast projects 
of spiritual endeavor, is a task far beyond the range of the 
utilitarian program; and it is only as we observe the excess 
of nature in man, which carries him onward toward an 
independent humanity, that we can be said to account for 
him. The vast objective method of the antique epic must 
receive something complementary from the subjective lyric, 
with its greater psychological profundity; and a classic art, 
which assumes that its task is only one of imitation, cannot 
prevent the dawning of a newer view which treats nature, 
not mimetically alone, but in symbolic fashion. Modern 
culture organizes humanity, as modern science arranges 
nature. 



158 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Literary utilitarianism of the Shakespeare-Goethe type 
appears more and more hopeless as we measure it according 
to humanity. Nature cannot contain man's being or satisfy 
his will, and the function of art in humanity shows how 
necessary are the supersensible and extra-useful. Hedonic 
utilities may content the man of nature, whether in his past 
or present situation, but where man's artistic education has 
progressed toward the ideal of humanity, he cultivates his 
garden, not for the sake of a stupefying toil, but because he in 
his culture proposes to complete nature. We cultivate the 
garden, not only for the sake of the useful cabbage, as 
Montaigne suggested, but in order to produce the useless 
blue flower of a romantic Novalis. Thus realism and roman- 
ticism in their mutual conflict point out the way to a higher 
and more consistent view of humanity's relation to man. 
Man cannot return to nature, but must go forward to 
humanity ; he cannot be born again as a pagan, but must 
take his critical stand in Christendom. Poetical ideals should 
find no special solace in paganism; the affected return to 
the torsos of classicism is hopeless, in an age like ours, which 
no longer tolerates the antique theory that art, whose essence 
is imitation, should likewise serve the end of utility. 

Antipathy to all forms of use, whether inner or outer, 
reveals the anti-utilitarian spirit of modern aesthetics. 
While our moderns, like Kant and Schopenhauer, seem to 
cling to the moralistic side of aesthetics, which, in an older 
age, led Plato to condemn the drama and suffered Aristotle 
to use it as a means of purifying the soul, they do not yield 
the point that beauty should further any human interest. 
Intuitive, as though even the labor of thinking were in- 
artistic, and contemplative to the degree of quiescence, our 
own theory of taste demands a thorough severance of beauty 
from utility. On its creative side, modern aesthetics seeks 
to avoid any taint of ignoble labor by pointing out that 
art arose in the form of play, and is continued for evermore 
in the same spirit — the Spieltrieb of Schiller. The freedom 
of humanity demands some such exalted view, and as the 
contemplation of beauty raises man above nature and leads 
him to forget himself as creature of the world, so the crea- 
tion of beauty is carried on in the spirit of devotion to a 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 159 

task infinitely superior to that of useful labor. The artist 
is not an artisan; wMch of the two shall give us the ideal 
of life? 

Labor is not the end of life, but the means; we work that 
we may enjoy leisure. Man is not man when he works; 
sometimes his temperament is best seen in his pastimes. 
Utilitarianism is a theory which expresses the modern as 
industrialist but not the modern as romanticist, and between 
these two tendencies there is a vast difference. The ancient, 
with his plastic view of the world, felt the oppression of no 
such contrast, but was privileged to work and play together ; 
but the modern, who feels the dignity of the labor in which 
as a system he participates, cannot remove the suspicion that 
the life of industry is not all there is to his human vocation. 
Hence his subjective romantic culture, his breach with his 
own life, which, as at the opening of the 19th century, wit- 
nessed the supremacy of poetry over science, a condition 
which to-day is exactly reversed. The powers of modern 
life might reproach us in the same way that the symbolic 
"Balls of Wool" reprove Peer Gynt: 

"We should have soared upward 
Like clangorous voices, 
And here we must trundle 
As gray woolen thread-balls" (Act V, Sc. vi). 

In its ideals of immediacy and activity, eudaemonism 
fails to appreciate the possibilities of spiritual life as these 
appear in human culture, artistic and scientific, ethical and 
religious. Both Aristotle and Bacon exalt contemplation 
above conquest and thus seem to postulate the emancipation 
of humanity from nature, but their views of spiritual life 
are such that man is never suffered to lose sight of the 
immediate, in whose possession his happiness is supposed to 
consist. The same failure reappears in Voltaire and Goethe, 
who were fully aware of the ideal in human existence but 
who could not trust man's culture with his happiness ; hence 
their common injunction to work in the garden of immediate 
benefit. Eudaemonism limits the field of human activity, 
fearing that man may be lured by his dreams of spiritual 
life, and however consistent its plan of life may seem, 
it fails to account for the ideal activity of humanity. 



VI 
RESULT OF NATURISM— THE VALUE OF LIFE 

I — THE RANGE OF NATURISM 

The general plan of life in whose light our discussion 
has been carried on, puts us in a position where we are 
privileged neither to affirm nor deny the ethics of naturism. 
Moral life had to have a beginning and there was no place 
for this but in nature which has produced man and fitted him 
out with instincts and consciousness. Yet the attitude of 
humanity toward nature, as shown in art and religion, logic 
and ethics, was not such as to suggest that it had any inten- 
tion of remaining there, so that the world of sense was and 
was not the home of humanity. From this passing contact 
of mankind with nature arose certain problems of life which, 
when discussed in a narrow hedonic fashion, could not be 
presented adequately, still less brought to solution. When it 
is seen that, however natural the hedonic experience of life 
was, humanity was bent upon some more remote realization, 
the problems of the naturistic view will tend to merge them- 
selves into the one problem of living, which only life itself 
can solve. In particular, these problems may be reviewed and 
readjusted according to the humanistic view, as follows: (i) 
The hedonic paradox of pleasure and the conflict between 
feeling and life, whereby there arises a problem which 
hedonism itself cannot solve. (2) The endlessness of desire 
whose spontaneity traces back to a source deeper than the 
love of pleasure. (3) The passive adjustment of man to 
nature by means of contemplation. (4) The active relation 
of man to the world in the ideal of conquest. 

Of these four, there will appear to be two general 
moods — of passivity and activity — where feeling and con- 
templative sentiment leave man in a receptive attitude; 
and where, again, desire and active conquest arouse man 

160 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 161 

with the ambition to subdue nature to his own being. These 
two tendencies invoh»e characteristic problems. In the midst 
of hedonic eudaemonia, the ceaseless striving of humanity 
constantly appears as that substantial process which explains 
the contingent relations of passive feeling and active desire. 
It is only in a false psychology and a fallacious logic that 
nature is suffered to envelop man and stifle his human free- 
dom. Nature itself, naively intuited by the man of primitive 
or of present time, can only serve the needs of a striving 
humanity; but, when artificially drawn from its proper 
sphere and sharply affirmed by hedonism or complacently 
assumed by eudaemonism, its significance for man is lost 
and its influence dissipated. The unity of nature and the 
integrity of mankind are injured by a system which places 
them competitively on the same horizontal level, instead of 
adjusting them vertically by way of subordinating the out- 
wardly sensuous to the inwardly spiritual. In the totality 
of the world, nature is something more than the source of 
hedonic gratification or the garden of eudaemonistic activity. 
It is the place where humanity perfects itself in a genuine 
spiritual fashion and the purpose of the natural order can 
hardly be accounted for on any such narrow basis of present 
gratification or immediate well-being. 

The world of nature in its wholeness belongs to man, but 
perfect naturism is possible to him only when he is in such 
possession of himself as to distinguish between his own inner 
nature and the outer being of the world. Both hedonism 
and eudaemonism are incapable of comprehending naturism, 
since they concern themselves with the phenomenal order and 
ignore the underlying reality of the world beneath time and 
space. Spiritual religion in its warfare upon the world tends 
to dignify the natural order even when the attitude toward 
it is purely negative. Christianity deems the gaining of the 
world-whole a valueless accomplishment and directs man to 
cultivate the soul-life, while Buddhism seeks to deliver man 
from the illusory world of Sansara by means of enlighten- 
ment. These religious programs involve a world-conscious- 
ness superior to all forms of hedonism, just as they indicate 
that the possession of the world is no simple problem of 
pleasure and happiness. Negative naturism thus stands 



1 62 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

nearer the meaning and tendency of man's life in the world 
than the positive naturism which, naively assumes man's 
ability to realize the world immediately. Hedonic naturism 
fails to account for both nature and humanity, for in the 
serious realization of man's position in the universe it is 
folly to suggest that we have in man a sensitive creature who 
can be satisfied by nature in its phenomenal immediacy. 
Neither nature nor humanity can be represented by pleasure, 
for the link connecting them is stronger than the love of 
eudaemonia. Positive naturism which asserts the value of 
immediacy is a failure; negative naturism, in the form of 
characterstic ethics, will be found to ignore the world of 
reality in its desire to negate the life of pleasure. Only in a 
thoroughly humanistic view does it become possible to con- 
template the inner nature of the world, whose phenomenal 
forms were affirmed and denied by eudaemonism and rigorism 
respectively. Even though the life of naturism be lost to 
man it is still possible for man to adjust himself to the world, 
and that in a manner superior to the schemes of hedonism 
and intuitionism. 

2 — THE WORTH OF LIFE 

However eccentric the naturistic view of life may be, it is 
possessed of sufficient consistency to demonstrate the value of 
life and the sense of human striving. The feeling of worth 
is the permanent possession of humanity acquired in con- 
nection with the magnificent order of nature in which it 
grew up. It is true that the naturistic view as such does not 
evince the unity of life in the totality of the world, but it 
suggests how commanding is man's position in the universe 
while it invests his life with an ineradicable sense of value. 
The hedonic side of man's nature presents the problem of 
value as no other view of life is able to do. Man's inability 
to attain to rectitude and to perform duty, serious problems 
though they may be, do not cause him to wonder concerning 
the meaning of his life ; for this is a question which arises in 
connection with defeated desire and a frustrated search for 
well-being whereby man begins to wonder whether in its 
inability to satisfy him life is worth living. The life-problem 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 163 

thus assumes a hedonic form and introduces the whole ques- 
tion of values, and guided by a simple sense of pleasure, man 
is led to look into the mysteries of his being. Pain is more 
significant than remorse, evil is more suggestive than the 
bad. The suspicion that the earth is not ready for man is 
more significant than the parallel truth that he is not fit 
for life, and the pain that he suffers is more significant than 
the wrong that he does. Pain has thus an educative value 
for by means of suggestions man is led to examine into the 
mystery of his earth-life. 

Pleasure has about it somewhat of the same speculative 
intent, so that upon a hedonic basis we may draw some in- 
ference concerning the worth of life. Hedonism reveals to 
man a principle of interest whereby he may interpret his 
being in nature. For the .sake of argument eliminate the 
living principles of hedonism and calculate the result where 
man has only conscience and duty to guide him. Such 
ethical ideals could never be sufficient to promote human 
activity, for they are negative and act as detents in man's 
conduct. Man does not live and act for the sake of ap- 
proval or from any sense of obligation, but because life is 
desirable in itself. Pleasure binds man to life in a way 
that virtue does not, while desire inspires him with an 
intensity unknown to duty. It is hedonism, therefore, that 
arouses man to a sense of his humanity, and with all our 
talk about ideals of life it must be admitted that we turn 
to nature with its sense of desire when we are in quest of 
the life that we would idealize. Hedonic elements contri- 
bute to life in no indirect fashion ; they stimulate the instincts 
and keep man away from the nihilistic idea that life is 
wrong. So close is the connection between pleasure-giving 
and life-preserving activities that hedonism serves humanity 
by relating it consciously to its home in nature. By he- 
donism all life-destroying ideals are opposed, for a system 
which seeks to justify and further actual existence is of 
value in opposing a contrary one which had no taste for 
life. 

While hedonism has no sense of human selfhood and 
worldhood, it evinces an instinctive connection between the 
human creature and his natural habitat, and lays down the 



164 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

law of living. Among the arguments for and against life, 
there ever stands out the general claim that nature has 
upon its creature, man, and after all else has been said, there 
remains the great fact that we live. In Hamlet, Shake- 
speare presents a simple argument that, however, is not at 
all convincing. Our life is an evil and it were well for 
us if we could escape from its fate, but the future with its 
dreamy uncertainty may be worse still, so that, as a hedonist, 
Hamlet decides in favor of life. Schopenhauer, who came 
to the same conclusion, avails himself of arguments quite 
the contrary, although he proceeds from the same principle 
of evil in the world. Schopenhauer's pessimism, however, 
prepares him for this condition of things and he justly con- 
cludes in favor of life. Expressed formally, his argument 
might be put as follows: Suffering is essential to life; man 
was meant to suffer; therefore, man should live. By re- 
nunciation, or denial of the will to live, and not by suicide, 
man should accept suffering as something necessary to his 
being {Welt ah Wille u. Vorstellung § 69). Yet, without 
such rafinnements, we may decide in favor of life ; inasmuch 
as nature has such a hold upon her creatures, it is folly for 
man to talk of ending his existence. Man was meant for 
life, and while he fails in both his animality and his spirit- 
uality, he is still human and should think only of living. 
De vita non est disputandum. 

Hedonism does not content itself with justifying the 
mere fact of life, but contends in favor of its desirability. 
There may be a sense of duty within life, but life itself is 
not so much a duty as a desire. Philosophy has not suc- 
ceeded in showing why being exists, and the aesthetical and 
ethical grounds proposed do not warrant us in assuming that 
we know the purpose of reality. Yet, within the domain 
of this vast metaphysical question, it is still possible to defend 
being upon the basis of desirability. Man is not prepared 
to will the extinction of all beings including himself, and 
just as it is impossible for speculative doubt to rid the 
thinker of such ideas as self, world, and God, so it is 
equally impossible for practical skepticism to choose in favor 
of non-existence. Both intellect and will adhere to the 
world in such a way that thinking and living must go on. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 165 

Naturism comes to the rescue of humanity by indicating the 
inherent value of life in itself, and while the hedonic and 
eudaemonistic methods of justifying life are wholly inade- 
quate, the general truth of hedonism remains. No matter 
how convincing the arguments for renunciation may ap- 
pear to be, no matter how complete the reasoning of pes- 
simism, life must be a benefit, and he who concludes against 
it and seeks to negate it must admit that it possesses value if 
only as an opportunity for denial on the part of man. In the 
midst of the metaphysical and moral service of naturism, it 
must be admitted that the plan proposed for man is not 
adequate, while the reasons given for life are not sufficient. 
Having seen what naturism is and does, it may be well to 
evaluate its principles in the light of our inwardly-striving 
humanity. 

3 — THE STRIVING OF HUMANITY BEYOND NATURE 

The course of human life in the world is calculated to 
lead man beyond nature into forms of existence whose he- 
donic value may easily be questioned. Yet so determined is 
the effort of man to assert his humanity that he abandons the 
natural world of pleasure and resolves to suffer as a human 
being. The usual formulas of naturism, such as the will-to- 
live and struggle for existence, do not account for human 
striving. If the striving within man were for life alone it 
would end when life had been attained and its issues secured 
against outer danger; that is, it would produce and perfect 
man as a nature-being alone. Man continues the struggle on 
beyond nature, and, in a realm of humanity, issuing from 
his own activities, he strives after virtue and beauty, knowl- 
edge and spiritual life. No longer does he wrestle with flesh 
and blood, but carries on a conflict with spiritual forces, and 
by undertaking a special form of activity he acquires de- 
finite human satisfaction. To assure ourselves of the in- 
adequate plans of naturism and to realize how vigorously 
man strives beyond sensuous life, we need only to review 
some characteristic forms of human endeavor. 

As a human being, man must have something more than 
the gifts of nature; these he must originate in freedom and 



1 66 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

develop according to reason. Civilization stands out as an 
attempt on man's part to construct an order of being to take 
the place of the natural one. Plato may rise above actual 
civilization and outline an ideal commonwealth; Rousseau 
may sink below it and find the ideal in nature; but the 
tendency to civilize and to live in an artificial order seems 
to belong to man as such, just as it reveals a normal ten- 
dency of his nature. Whether he advances beyond his 
civilization or returns to the natural order, he must act in 
response to freedom and adapt himself to life in a conscious 
manner; whereby we know that nature has lost her hold 
upon him. No known principles of nature can account for 
man's life according to rights in a state governed by law; 
no naturistic theories can account for the truly human doing 
exhibited by this highest species. The loftiest place in nature 
will not satisfy man who wants a world of his own, and 
where the forces of nature combine to produce a human will 
they are further destined to feel that will turned against 
them. Now civilization is an evidence of this surplus of 
natural force. 

Culture is even more competitive than civilization, since 
it is vaster in itself, and more completely emancipated from 
the natural order of things. The struggle for culture, 
which urges man on beyond nature into realms of poetry 
and plastic, is a part of man in bis early as well as his 
later condition. Primitive man produced his culture in the 
very face of the downward forces of nature: we seek to 
continue ours in the industrialism of steel and stone. The 
survival of culture, in itself of another than a natural order, 
is the survival of man; that which invests man and informs 
his consciousness is this principle of a strictly human life. 
Now the very fact that art imitates, symbolizes and seeks to 
perfect nature is evidence of the bloodless conflict between 
the two, and where each seems to claim man as its private 
possession, the significance of humanity begins to appear in 
fine proportion. Culture, which is internal and sentimental, 
seems to be the easy prey of a violent nature, but when man 
chooses between them, he finds the world of culture more 
habitable. At this early stage of our work, we cannot de- 
cide whether the life of culture is calculated to perfect and 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 167 

satisfy humanity in such a way as to be indispensable to him ; 
but we can assert that mah was destined for just such an in- 
tellectual life as history has revealed in him. 

Both civilization and culture not only negate nature, but 
assert humanity as an independent order. Between it and 
them there is a firm bond and one unknown in the world of 
natural forces. Humanity may be viewed aesthetically 
after the manner of pagan art and politics, or it may assume 
the modern form where sympathy takes the place of super- 
iority; it is plain that man has been determined to supersede 
nature at any cost of health and happiness. Humanity, or- 
ganized without by civilization, within by culture, stands 
before man as the goal of his life and the ground of his 
being, so that any scheme that seeks to comprehend him 
must abandon a purely naturistic standard and survey him in 
the independent order of his humanity. The naturistic 
scheme of ethics accounts for human striving as mere desire 
for pleasure or the impulse to seek satisfaction in useful 
labor; but a genuine view of man reveals how far-reaching 
is the tendency toward humanity, so that no simple methods 
of hedonism can hope to account for the performances of 
human history. Civilization and culture may be wrong 
from the hedonic standpoint, inasmuch as they make man's 
departure from nature an unhappy one; but they are right 
from the humanistic standpoint which assumes something 
beyond nature as the destiny of man. 

History declares that this vocation has already been 
taken by man, even though he may not know what all his 
striving is for, and so far as the negative side of the question 
is concerned, we need not be in doubt that man has before 
him some goal unknown to nature. Man may be earth- 
born, but he is lured onward by the spirit of humanity, 
which so influences his mind that no fullness of cosmic life 
can satisfy him. In this spirit of independence, man ela- 
borates realms of his own for himself, so that within his 
civilization and culture appear the forms of rights and re- 
ligion. Only a superficial philosophy can find satisfaction in 
a theory of natural rights and natural religion, for the very 
essence of law and worship consists in transcending nature 
in the interests of independent humanity. In contrast with 



1 68 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the endless demands of a progressive, creative humanity, the 
satisfactions offered by naturistic hedonism are crude beyond 
expression. 

4 — THE INNESS OF HUMAN FEELING 

The superiority of humanity over nature produces not 
only the excess of human striving, but the inwardness of 
human feeling. Pleasure — pain, as hedonism interprets 
it, does not lead man out as far as his human striving calls 
him to go, nor does it descend to the depths of his inner 
nature. Hedonism has neglected the psychological duty of 
emancipating the affections, and has persisted in the arti- 
ficial introspection of the 18th century. From Aristotle to 
Spinoza, psychology was bi-partite in its discussion of cogni- 
tion and volition, and not until the German psychologists 
of the late Enlightenment took up the problem, was any 
distinct place found for affection. This important step was 
taken by Tetens in his "Philosophische Versuche uber die 
menschliche Natur" (1776), in imitation of Mendelssohn, 
in his " Brief e uber die Empfindungen" ( 1755). The tri- 
partite scheme was systematized by Kant in his three 
Critiques, wherein the "Kritik der Urtheilskraft" recognizes 
the possibility of judgments of feeling, and submitted to 
dialectical test in Schleiermacher's "Reden uber die Re- 
ligion." Where aesthetics and religion, as also psychology, 
have found it feasible to consider feeling as an independent 
phase of consciousness, ethics has adhered to traditional 
views with their mechanical ideas about pleasure and pain, 
with the paradoxes of pleasures and dilemmas of desire that 
must follow from such an artificial method. 

The emancipation of feeling is only a sign of the general 
freedom of man from nature. In his animal capacity, man 
experiences pain and pleasure, but in his human character 
he turns these into intellectual judgments concerning the 
worth of living and the beauty of nature. Hence it is 
not the immediate quality, but the ultimate significance 
which gives to feeling its important office in man's con- 
sciousness, and without the ability to judge according to 
feeling, there could be no more problem of life for man 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 169 

than for the beast. Thus the significant thing about feeling 
is its adaptability to fornts of judgment, and history does 
not fail to note that when feeling was made independent, 
the science of aesthetics arose with Baumgarten, Sulzer and 
Kant. The nearest approach made by hedonism was in the 
hedonic calculus whose failure was due to the fact that 
feeling was not treated inwardly but in a purely objective 
fashion as though it were material rather than mental. 

Some other than a hedonic quality will be found to reside 
in human feelings; and the fact that pleasure and pain 
belong to man gives them something more than a psychologi- 
cal import. Pleasure as such belongs to the normal in- 
dividual by virtue of his inherent animality, but the capacity 
for enjoyment differs among individuals in a manner un- 
known in other orders of animal life. Hence it comes 
about that some individuals of a certain organization are 
more inclined to seek pleasure and better fitted to appreciate 
it than those of different temperament. Individuals pos- 
sessed of beautiful souls will find in pleasure what another 
type of humanity overlooks; life means more hedonically 
to Goethe than to Schiller; more to Corot than to Millet. 
Nature, which is a great leveler, may put men upon the 
same original plane; but culture differentiates them and thus 
makes it difficult to generalize upon the basis of natural 
feeling. Since, therefore, man becomes man, not through 
his given life in nature, but by means of the cultivation of 
his humanity, the hedonic system betrays its weakness when 
it endeavors to account for him en masse upon the simple 
basis of psychic pleasure— pain. 

5 — THE ENTRANCE OF PESSIMISM 

The striving of humanity beyond nature and man's 
descent into his consciousness have been found to carry life 
beyond the borders of hedonism and eudaemonism. At the 
same time, such a decidedly human way of conducting life re- 
moved man from any optimistic view of the world. How 
remarkable it is that naturism with all its boast of empirical 
faithfulness should habitually pursue the path of an optimism 
so rarely justified by actual life! It is true that Hegesias, 



170 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the Cyrenaic, who sought to justify life in terms of pleasure, 
fell into such profound pessimism that in his exaltation of 
suicide he was called, 7racn0avaTos — the persuader to die. 
Hobbes also was wont to despair of man, but believed that 
life could be made successful when proper political steps were 
taken. But most hedonists are heedlessly optimistic, where- 
by they show how far from the spirit of humanity their 
theory is. The pessimistic question confronts every one who 
discourses upon life, and both nature and humanity require 
man to consider whether their respective claims can be met 
by hedonic methods. Nature is as far from the notions of 
hedonism as humanity is from the plans of eudaemonism. 

Man's life in nature is so serious that hedonism can 
scarcely guide him. A recognition of this fact may be found 
in the altered view of pleasure when the school passed from 
the hedonic calculus of Bentham to the hedonic law of 
Spencer, whereby feeling gave way to life in which it 
assumed a symptomatic place with pleasure and pain indi- 
cating benefit and injury respectively. Evolution having 
shown what a conquest life is, it is no longer possible to 
take life for granted and then seek the greatest amount of 
pleasure in it; but life must be pursued without regard to 
pain or pleasure which subordinate their particular interests 
to the general conditions of existence. Preservation, not 
pleasure, is the main thing in human physical existence, and 
under the severe conditions of life it is absurd to continue 
the traditional arguments for the greatest amount of happi- 
ness. Spencer was aware of the weakness displayed by he- 
donism, but was unwilling to depart from the stolid optimism 
that had so long accompanied British morality. (Data of 
Ethics, § 9-19.) If one will idealize life he may escape, 
perhaps, from this pessimistic dilemma, but hedonism has 
ever relied upon the given facts of experience and, therefore, 
no such idealistic method can relieve the situation for him. 
As to the idealist himself, he is so interested in contrary con- 
siderations, like virtue and rectitude, that he does not avail 
himself of the opportunity to rescue happiness from its 
hedonic fate, and so pessimism triumphs over a view that 
says, Life was meant for pleasure which it produces to such 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 171 

a degree as to make conduct hedonic. 

Where nature seems* bent upon something more funda- 
mental than pleasure, humanity seems equally indifferent to 
eudaemonia. This second form of naturism claims that, 
whereas man may not receive pleasure as a gift from nature, 
he may promote happiness by reacting upon the world in its 
immediacy. But, like nature, humanity has larger interests 
for man and to cultivate the garden is as vain as to seek 
enjoyment from its fruits. The purpose of life is too remote 
for these intra-terrestrial schemes, and like hedonism, eudae- 
monism must settle with a host who has vast issues implicit 
in his inner nature. The human will, likewise, is not so 
easily subdued and the blindness of its activities cannot be 
cured by the simple methods of eudaemonist labor. He who 
knows the will is not likely to magnify the blessings of 
mere activity, but tends rather to agree with Schopenhauer 
in his view of the misery that follows from the servitude 
of the will. "Anxiety for the constant demands of the 
will in whatsoever form continually fills and moves con- 
sciousness; but without rest no true well-being is at all 
possible. Thus is the subject of willing constantly stretched 
on the revolving wheel of Ixion, pours water into the sieve 
of the Danaids, is the ever-longing Tantalus." {Welt ah 
Wille u. Vorstellung, § 38.) A similar conclusion against 
blind activism appears in Browning's "Cleon," where the 
poet writes to the king, saying: 

"Thou in the daily building of thy tower, 

Did'st ne'er engage in work, for mere work's sake — 
Had'st ever in thy heart the living hope 
Of some eventual rest a-top of it." 

Nature's inferiority to man is responsible for this pessimistic 
condition that besets all eudaemonism, for the order of being 
capable of producing mineral, plant and animal, is mani- 
festly inadequate to the claims of humanity. When man 
appears on the planet, the world is superseded, its borders 
transcended by reason, its forces excelled by the creative 
will of the highest species. Whatever else it may be, hu- 



172 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

manity is an order of being in which will and intellect are 
not in immediate rapport with the world external, but reach 
out toward some more satisfactory object. Reason cannot 
constantly dwell upon the concrete, but needs nourishment 
from the contemplation of the imperceptible, so that the 
attempt on the part of naturism to bind humanity down to 
immediacy results in pessimism. 

6 THE MEANING OF HUMAN FEELING 

In surveying the problem of human feeling as it now 
shapes itself at the conclusion of the hedonic, eudaemonistic 
discussion, we need not raise the empty question, Why 
does man have feelings? Nature, which furnishes lower 
types of sentient life with the same quality of affection, 
evidently desires that we shall accept the mere fact of feel- 
ing, along with many other phases of our consciousness. 
On the other hand, it is both pertinent and necessary to 
ask why man feels as he does, especially when the life of 
pleasure leads us into a labyrinth with its accompanying 
loss of enjoyment. The details of this unavoidable paradox, 
wherein the search for pleasure defeats itself, have already 
been relegated to the hedonic argument, but the secret of 
the problem seems to lie elsewhere. The reason for the 
paradox appears to consist in the peculiar position which 
man occupies in the larger universe of nature-humanity. 
With his human vocation, which occasions ideal desires, man 
is still in the care of nature, and thus can hardly avoid doing 
that which promises pleasure. For the animal that abides 
wholly in nature, there is no hedonic paradox; but in perfect 
accord with the hedonic law, the creature of the natural 
order fulfills the demands of its being. 

In man, whose consciousness quickens the quality and 
intensity of all feeling, pleasure is set up as an end in itself 
to be pursued, not for the sake of benefit, but on account of 
the passing experience. But the development of reason, 
which leads man to postulate pleasure as a good, does not 
fail to influence the humanistic side of his being, and, like 
the battle of birds in the upper atmosphere, the hedonic and 
humanistic carry on their conflict for the soul of man. It is 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 173 

man's position between nature and spirit which makes pleas- 
ure seem so much andi really amount to so little; this it is 
which produces the hedonic puzzle. If nature alone were at 
work in man, his instincts would guide him right to a material 
end ; but man is a combination of both material and spiritual, 
and what can better reveal this than the problem before us? 
More advanced forms of naturism seek to escape from the 
paradox by setting up some derivative product of pleasure, as 
political utility, or social preservation. Thorough relief can 
come only when man realizes that he can not be contented 
upon the basis of naturistic living, but in the spirit of culture 
moves onward toward the realization of humanity. 

The progress of hedonism did not fail to advise man 
concerning the largesse of human feeling; for pleasure and 
pain, which are themselves common phenomena in the whole 
sentiment world, are treated by man in such an original 
fashion that they became abruptly transformed into senti- 
ments. This appeared when we called attention to the in- 
dependence of affection as one among other processes in con- 
sciousness. Such an emancipation of human feeling, which 
gave Kant his aesthetics and Schleiermacher his philosophy 
of religion, affirms the supremacy of man over matter; for 
it creates interests whose ideal form and unattainable char- 
acter are never the work of nature. Humanity appears in 
these aesthetic phases of consciousness and we see anew why 
it is that the human subject can find only surprise and de- 
feat in the attempted appropriation of immediate feeling. 
The rational nature of man, which allows him to survey both 
the world and himself in their unity, will not permit him 
to find ultimate satisfaction in such feelings as arise in par- 
ticular natural forms and appeal to so many isolated func- 
tions of consciousness. Meant for totality within and with- 
out, the representative of the human species cannot satisfy 
his desires by means of any sum of individual feelings. 

This inward human responsibility, which the moralist 
finds it so difficult to understand, has long been assumed in 
art and religion. These forms of culture recognize that 
nature was never meant to contain humanity whose overflow 
beyond the borders of sense has become a by-word. It was 
no longer urged that man should either accept or reject na- 



174 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ture, iot it was understood that the natural could be but a 
phase of his being. To believe in natural impressions apart 
from some idealistic interpretation of them or, on the other 
hand, to insist that reason spurn sense altogether, is un- 
heard of in aesthetical and religious philosophies. These 
forms of spiritual life do not consider sense and reason as 
though they were equal, for a consideration of their special 
qualities can only show how one tends to the primitive, the 
other to the perfect. Our modern philosophy witnessed the 
reconciliation of the two when Kant revised logic and 
aesthetics, but thus far the field of ethics has produced only 
casuistical conflicts or special forms of theoretical construc- 
tion. Without looking to any serious philosophy of life, 
ethical theory has said either yes or no to our human in- 
stincts, without examining the conditions of human existence. 
Accordingly, it is an imperfect disjunction in ethical rea- 
soning when it is declared that man must either be in the 
world eudaemonistically, or out of it rigoristically ; since 
there is a third possible view which consists in assuming that 
he may be passing through nature in the achieving of his 
destiny. 

The eudaemonistic view surpasses the purely hedonic one 
when it seeks to provide for human satisfaction in terms of 
immediacy, whether in contemplation or conquest. Eudae- 
monism is centered in the empirical ego, whose field of 
activity is the natural world-order; as a theory, it does not 
appreciate the ambiguous place which man occupies in the 
world, for it concludes by resigning him to the natural order 
where he is supposed to find himself. Man himself makes 
use of eudaemonistic methods, when he transforms sense into 
thought, passion into sentiment, force into law, wonder into 
worship; but in so doing he is only attempting the grand 
transmutation of naturism into humanism. Eudaemonism 
is really a form of renunciation which despairs of making 
out any sense in human life; persuaded that it was the final 
form of human being, Shakespeare concluded that the prac- 
tical postulate of life was an activity which was sufficiently 
realized in play. Goethe saw the same truth, but with the 
Enlightenment instead of the Renaissance behind him, he 
contended for utility as a means to self-satisfaction. Dante's 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 175 

sense of humanity leads him to postulate an endless spiritual 
progress, which reappears in the ceaseless strivings of Wag- 
ner's art. 

That human sensitivity which is occasioned by man's am- 
biguous position in the universe cannot receive full expres- 
sion as long as it remains upon the individualistic plane; for 
the very dramatic tendency of feeling, wherein Shakespeare 
and Goethe emphasize the artistic nature of man, involves 
not only an individual actor with lyrical tendencies, but an 
epic world of persons to which he seeks to adjust himself. 
Hence, apart from altruism, the living striving human in- 
dividual evinces a complete form of activity which involves 
his fellows as well as himself. To be altruistic is only to 
aid another ego in his self-love; to be humanistic is to have 
interests so universal that they merge the claims of both 
the empirical persons called ego and alter into a total form 
of spiritual life. The problem of altruism is not to be solved 
upon the basis of a naturism which knows nothing of the 
human individuality and totality of man; but can appreciate 
only the pleasures and utilities which gather now around one 
and then another person. Humanity, which does not fail to 
produce the selfhood of the individual in contrast to the 
not-self of nature, is no less remiss in elaborating a human 
worldhood without which the ideal of humanity cannot be 
attained. Hence we do not praise Dante and Wagner be- 
cause they taught altruism, but because they revealed that 
fullness of human existence which is beyond the claims of 
either the individual or the group. 

7 — THE SENSE OF HUMAN STRIVING 

Just as the sensitivity of human consciousness, inexpli- 
cable in terms of man's nature-existence, seems to depend 
upon the ambiguous position of man in the world, so desire 
and activity will be found to respond to none other than 
an inner call which comes from the world of humanity. 
Hedonism seeks to exhaust human spontaneity in accordance 
with desire; eudaemonism would consume it in activity of 
the will directed toward some object of immediate interest. 
With respect to the hedonic form of human activity, it is 



176 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

just as reasonable to inquire, Why should man desire? as to 
ask, Why does man have feelings ? Human sensitivity, whose 
root lies buried in the recesses of nature, appears explicable 
in the light of man's naturistic-humanistic place in the uni- 
verse ; for it is the perpetual contrast between a spiritual need 
and a sensuous form of satisfaction which produces paradox 
and pessimism. So also human desire; man is urged onward 
by that central affirmation which constitutes his being as 
human. As the animal is aroused by the sense of a good 
which it seeks for itself and its species, so man is ever stirred 
and supported by an ineradicable tendency to become hu- 
manized. Our examination of hedonism was meant to 
bring out the fact that man is ruled by active desire, which 
ever acts as an initiative, and is not guided by any passive 
calculation which weighs the attractions of pleasure and 
the repulsions of pain. As desire explains feeling, so hu- 
manity must account for desire. 

Desire can explain nothing beyond itself, but waits for 
some fuller impulse to account for its particular form of 
striving. The organic impulse in man, which ever leads 
him to assert his own being over against the world, is the 
source of desire which itself operates in the narrow domain 
of nature. As a human function, desire has caught the 
secret of life, and stands in need only of idealization with 
its accompanying extension of the tendency into the world 
of spirit. Man was meant, not for activity alone, but for 
perfect humanity; and the sense of human striving resolves 
itself into that unified form of affirmation which constitutes 
the essence of man as such. The persistency of desire ap- 
pears, then, in connection with all human positing, and as 
the beast cannot escape from the struggle to live, so man 
can find no release from the ever-present impulse to emanci- 
pate his humanity from the domain of nature. The par- 
ticular is explained by the general, and the part by the whole; 
we desire in nature because we strive for humanity. 

The mystery of activity is one with the mystery of 
desire; that is, both are expressions of that complete affirma- 
tion which, as it guides man to his humanity, leads him to 
long for some more or less immediate form of satisfaction 
in nature. Eudaemonistic activity is one remove from im- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 177 

mediate consciousness in both subject and object. It is the 
will of man directed toward an idea, not his desire aiming at 
sense; and in such a deliberate manner that the purpose of 
life, obscured by hedonic desiring, appears more clearly now 
that it is conducted amid ideal feelings with the threat of 
pessimism hanging over life. No longer lured by pleasure 
or animated by desire, man is permitted to assert his humanity 
as an end in itself, although eudaemonism does not encour- 
age him to invest this with any other than the naturistic 
sense of immediacy. Yet the main point of the eudae- 
monistic argument remains as the permanent element of 
human striving, which with Rousseau and Voltaire was a 
joyous cultivation of the garden, while with Faust and 
Fichte it involved the activity of the will for the sake of an 
act which began in the deed — Im Anfang war die That. 
Humanism is ready to further this method of life, but it 
postulates striving for the sake of humanity, not for the 
sake of activity. Art for art's sake, faith for faith's sake, 
action for action's sake, are but auxiliaries of that total deed 
which man forms for the purpose of creating his humanity. 

By means of that idealization with which eudaemonism 
exalts human activity, it becomes possible to regard the 
human deed apart from its source in desire and its goal in 
utility. As hedonism had vainly sought for a justifiable 
altruism, so it felt the need of an idealistic estimate of action 
in the form of moralism, whose essence, however, it was 
unable to evince. Eudaemonism carries the argument one 
step nearer the conclusion when it abandons the fruit of 
action as something concrete and falls back upon the useful 
tendency inherent in the exercise of the will. We cultivate 
the garden for the sake of the gardener, and perform the deed 
for the sake of the act. This involves the artistic ideal of 
an activity which, in the erection of a temple, carving of a 
statue, or painting of a canvas, ministers not unto human 
welfare in the world of corporeal things, but still keeps 
within the domain of immediacy in time and space. Never- 
theless, man becomes detached from his rough contact with 
the world, and learns to seek ideal satisfactions. Such is the 
manifest meaning of heteronomy which does not so much 
identify pleasure with virtue, as it shows how the ideal satis- 



178 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

factions of eudaemonfa tend in the same direction as the 
full values of the human world-order. Autonomy is not the 
corrective for heteronomy ; for in the totality of human striv- 
ing both have a subordinate position. Hence he who ele- 
vates human striving above both desire and duty is no more 
interested in evincing^ the autonomous character of the 
moral life than in showing how altruistic is the essence of 
human action. It is sufficient to point out that, both with 
regard to his fellow and himself, man is able to assume an 
idealistic attitude which is a sign of the spiritual supremacy 
of his human life. He may be both creature and character. 
From the conclusion to which we have been drawn, in 
summing up the results of naturism in the light of human 
striving, we may pass to the second phase of human activity 
in the form of characteristic ethics. One system gives content 
and coloring, the other form and line. Man's capacity for a 
desire which is above mere pleasure-seeking, and his ability 
to exert an activity which is superior to the love of happi- 
ness, prepare for another form of life wherein a restraining 
conscience takes the place of mere feeling, and a rigorous 
duty offsets the influence of naturistic desire. Yet, like 
naturistic ethics, characteristic morality is nothing apart 
from the total activity of human positing. 



PART THIRD 
CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS 






I 

THE LIFE OF HUMANITY IN WILL 

I — FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE 

As naturistic ethics sought to show man how he could 
receive the most from the world, so characteristic ethics 
teaches him how to give back to the universe all that he has 
acquired. No simple contrast between the categories of 
passivity and activity, like Aristotle's voklv and 7ra<rx«v, 
will indicate the immense difference between these two 
views of human life. Naturism indicates life without 
ideals; characteristic ethics gives a theory of life without 
proof. Both views fail, because they do not stop to consider 
the general question of humanity, What is life for? If the 
enjoyment of pleasure is impossible and the self-infliction of 
pain unnecessary, both eudaemonist and rigorist are wrong in 
that they uphold principles which are not native to humanity. 
These practical conclusions, which relegate man to happi- 
ness or misery, depend upon the premises which uphold the 
arguments concerned. Here, naturism, which is all content, 
is wanting in ethical categories and must borrow from its 
opponent when it would talk of moralism; there, character- 
istic ethics lacks the content necessary to fill out its forms of 
right and obligation. 

Like naturistic ethics, the characteristic school seeks to 
account for established morality and then attempts to align 
an ideal for mankind; in addition to this analogy, it follows 
naturism in assuming first a special form of intuitionism, 
comparable to hedonism, a general view of life according to 
rigorism; or the opposite of eudaemonism. Intuitionism as- 
sumes a fourfold root whose branches are inclined in either 
an intellectual or a volitional direction. Thus conscience, 
the antipode of pleasure, allies itself with rectitude and de- 
velops ethical judgment, while freedom develops into duty 

181 



182 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

whose demands offer contrast to those of desire. How the 
growing moral life of man finds nourishment from such 
barren principles remains to be seen, but it cannot be denied 
that there is a life according to character which is as real as 
life according to nature, and the program of intuitionism 
while wanting in pleasure and desire, happiness and utility is 
likely to be as rich as that of a hedonism which knew nothing 
of conscience and rectitude, freedom and duty. 

2 — THE PLACE OF CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS 

In the light of the general problem of life, we may ask 
what characteristic ethics proposes to do for man. This 
will appear in general when the method of intuitionism is 
contrasted with the service of naturistic morality. Where 
the ethics of naturism attempts to explain the origin of 
morality in sense, characteristic ethics assumes the task of 
justifying its ground in reason, or intuition. It is quite 
natural that such a plan should appear in the course of 
man's moral progress toward humanity, and we should expect 
the characteristic view of life to assume a place as one of 
the stages in human realization. The continuity of human 
striving, which leads man through successive stages of de- 
velopment, makes room for a quality of life and an accom- 
panying class of men above the range of naturistic hedonism. 
Survivals of this second period are indicated in the unfolding 
of Aryan wisdom, wherein it is noticeable how a triple system 
seems to invest the spirit of human progress. Herein, the 
tendency to make morality derivative and characteristic, and 
not merely immediate and naturistic, is shown in Kapila's 
quality of Rajas-Guna, with its devotion to works, appears 
in the psychical men of Valentinus, in the warrior class of 
Plato, as in Aristotle's men of public life, and in modern 
philosophy of history appears as a stage in the development 
of mankind which passes through a heroic age of sheer mor- 
ality, as outlined by Vico and Schiller. 

However difficult it may be to explain human morality 
with any set historical plan, it is obvious that the principles 
which man has used to guide his conduct must have some 
reference to the complete course of his life, so that instead 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 183 

of asserting that there is a rationalistic way of treating ethics, 
it seems wiser to survey this type as the memorial of an actual 
condition of life which, before the dawn of theoretical ethics, 
controlled the striving of humanity. Hence, we have before 
us, not the tenets of a certain school of ethics, but the de- 
veloped principles of a definite period in human history; and 
just as there is a sense in which we are all eudaemonists, 
so it is equally true that, owing to the influence of history, 
we are all rigorists, although neither view expresses the 
manifest plan of life inevitably pursued by a species destined 
to achieve, neither eudaemonism nor rigorism, but humanism. 
Meanwhile, we are in a position to appreciate the in- 
fluence of the characteristic view of life, and while the sys- 
tematic treatment of this honored school may reveal weakness 
in the intuitional method employed, and show that there 
is no such rationalistic demonstration of morality as the school 
has always urged, it is calculated to compensate for this 
injury by pointing out how strong is the rigoristic conclu- 
sion that life consists in renunciation. Humanity is 
strangely adapted to the melancholy plan, and the human 
will is as skillful in its presence of defeat as when enjoying 
victory. For, as the forces of optimism unite to further 
eudaemonia, the inference of pessimism does not fail to 
count in favor of ataraxia. This condition of affairs is 
brought about by the fact that characteristic ethics is not 
strong on the purely psychological side, as is shown when 
it appeals to a special class of mental forms called "intui- 
tions"; intuitionism is advanced in the face of weak 
psychology and faulty logic. But on the ethical side, this 
theory, which is not so much a direct as a derivative product 
of nature, is linked with the ideal, and its moral categories 
of right and duty seem to be incontrovertible. Hence the 
intuitionist reposes in the ethical security of his intrinsic 
moral principles, while he uses his activities to show how 
natural are his premises. It is the demonstration of charter- 
istic ethics that occasions the difficulty, and a calm con- 
sideration of the claims which are put forth in behalf of 
conscience will lead the unprejudiced thinker to see that, as 
with the hedonist, * 'proof" does not lend itself to either 
utility or virtue. 



184 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

From this secondary form of ethics we are led to see the 
dignity of the moral life, although the school which furthers 
this notion has no way of demonstrating its human value. 
At the same time, it furnishes an ethical estimate of human 
striving with the ideal of intrinsic morality; for it detaches 
virtue from its original position and looks upon it for its own 
sake. For this reason, we style the method that of "char- 
acteristic" ethics. Without as yet raising the question whe- 
ther, in opposition to eudaemonism, it is wise to abandon our 
native immediacy and consider man as though he lived unto 
himself alone, we may notice that this is what the character- 
istic theory attempts to do, and most of its arguments, instead 
of being directed toward evincing the value of virtue as such, 
are turned against the hedonic standard of useful or in- 
terested morality. However artificial the school of con- 
science-duty may turn out to be, it cannot be denied that 
it has surpassed hedonism in portraying the ideal side of 
man's moral striving. 

The academic result of characteristic ethics has been to 
formulate ethics as a distinct science. With such naturistic 
principles as pleasure, desire, and happiness, there would be 
no foundation for an ethical view of life; but with deter- 
minate ideals, like goodness, virtue, duty, it is not content to 
survey human life in the form of morality. In the con- 
sciousness of man, characteristic ethics has indicated a moral 
limen ; indeed it is in connection with this school that we find 
an ethical field in the form of moral consciousness or con- 
science. In this way, man has found it possible to live apart 
from nature with interests which, if not ultimate, are suffi- 
ciently remote to authorize a new departure in the form of a 
Moral World-order, discernible in Plato's idealism and 
Fichte's voluntarism. Characteristic ethics thus indicates a 
breach with nature and the parallel development of a world 
of custom. The philological value of the term custom in 
suggesting such roots as have produced ethics and morality 
is too obvious to require anything more than passing recog- 
nition. 

In its traditional form, the school of characteristic ethics 
has shown dependence upon custom by identifying its intui- 
tions with established customs and recognized virtues. The 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 185 

side-conflict between things <£iW and 0£<ru need not be 
allowed to demonstrate the field and thus falsely persuade 
us that characteristic intuitions are subtended by as many 
distinctions in the world of reality. In antiquity, with the 
Sophist who originated it, the view of virtue was not ad- 
vanced in favor of any rationalizing morality, but the con- 
trary; while Cynic and Stoic, who had the advantage of 
Socrates' moral concepts, did not ally this notion of nature 
with any plan of intuitions. Cudworth, who rehabilitates 
the distinction in modern times, is unable to fill out the con- 
tent of the abstract, and can only dogmatize in behalf of a 
morality which is <£vo-« ko.1 d/aviJTos ( Eternal and Immutable 
Morality, Bk. 1. Ch. i-m, etc). Later Scotch philosophy 
further confessed the conventional character of their intui- 
tions when they based them upon "common-sense morality," 
whose origin was to be found, not in reason, but in experi- 
ence. 

Nevertheless, if one is not especially pledged to intuition- 
ism, which demands that human ideals shall be sun-clear, 
he is in a position to observe how the transmutation from 
nature to ethics was brought about. It was by means of 
custom. Surely the intuitionist, who urges that ethical re- 
lations hold, not <j>v(rei, but Secret, does not mean that the 
world of nature contains the material of the virtues 
or the form of the good. Common-sense morality stands for 
that which is established, and assumes the form of something 
conventional; for which reason it does not become the in- 
tuitionist as much as the hedonist to assume any intimate 
relations with the natural order, which is a hedonic one. 
The strength of characteristic ethics lies in an established 
morality which is styled the ethics of common-sense, al- 
though such terminology may be misleading; and inasmuch 
as characteristic ethics arises as something derivative, when 
humanity detaches itself from the natural order of im- 
mediacy in time and space, it is not wholly consistent in its 
advocate to look upon it as something eternal and immu- 
table. Intuitions are traditions which by being deep-seated 
easily pass as symbols of eternal verities, but history has wit- 
nessed their rise while its special periods have experienced 
appropriate changes in the estimates set upon virtue, as the 
change from classicism to Christianity shows. 



1 86 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

3 THE TRANSITION FROM NATURE TO CHARACTER 

From the history of humanity, it is evident that the 
life of immediate interest is not sufficient to content the 
activities of a striving creature like man. To experience 
pleasure, satisfy desire, and cultivate the garden of imme- 
diacy is not enough to satisfy man as such; hence arise re- 
mote aims and a course of conduct which involves ideal ac- 
tivities. It involves no rigoristic considerations to see that 
man creates new duties and assumes new tasks when con- 
fronted by the human world of culture and civilization. 
These two forms of expression contain the essence of a 
humanity which is now beyond desire and happiness in their 
impulsive and immediate forms. In his culture, man assumes 
the metaphysical responsibility of the race, and decides that 
it is a derivative life of art and science which he proposes to 
follow and enjoy. In his civilization he takes upon him a 
moral burden, for he proposes to live according to virtue 
instead of pleasure, and thus creates great ethical and reli- 
gious standards. With this development of man's mental 
and social life, it is not expected that he shall continue to 
measure the meaning of his existence in terms of animalistic 
interest; for his pleasures have become associated with his 
culture-interests and his desires can be fulfilled only as civil- 
ization perfects itself. It needs no metaphysical reflection 
to show that the Greeks took pleasure in and desired culture 
just as the Romans had similar ambitions in the direction of 
civilization. Human history, which is concerned with cus- 
tom, is a perpetual argument in favor of characteristic 
morality; and whether virtue contains a reminiscence of 
pleasure or not, it now has a meaning of its own. 

Much of the antipathy toward the idea of transmutation 
in morality has been due to the tendency to make the change 
consist of something external rather than internal, while the 
range of the development has been greatly exaggerated. All 
moral change is something like that which Leslie Stephen 
has styled "secular variation", a happy application of the term 
indicated in his table of contents, but not incorporated in 
the text (Sci. of Eth. Ch. iv § 14). In reality, moral 
transmutation is not akin to naturistic evolution, but is 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 187 

rather a transmutation of experience in human consciousness 
and kept well within »the borders of humanity. It is in- 
conceivable that ethical judgments should ever be the same 
for all peoples in all periods of human history. Humanity 
produces its ideals gradually in connection with a long pro- 
cess of self-realization, and we should not expect to find 
the cardinal virtues among savages. On the other hand, if 
it be claimed that the idea of change is untenable in moral 
discussions, it must be remembered that the same idea has 
always been difficult in metaphysical discussions, so that the 
situation in the intuitional school is by no means extraor- 
dinary, much less does it warrant any special privileges to the 
advocate of fixed morality. There is something suggestive 
in the immutable ethical concepts of an ancient Euclid and a 
modern Cudworth, but their static moralism has not guided 
European philosophy in its characteristic ethics. 

The substantial bond between the first period and the 
second is found in the continuity of human striving, which 
embraces the naturistic desire for happiness as well as the 
characteristic demand for perfection. Hence the community 
of ethical theories is to be found in the unity of human life, 
and we are under no more obligation to explain the problem 
of ethical progress than to explain the evolution of human 
history which we accept as a fact and philosophize accord- 
ingly. What characteristic ethics needs is to see that 
morality has developed without and within, a truth that 
finds a secure place in the unity of human striving. Pro- 
gress in ethical consciousness does not imply that vice has 
become virtue, but simply indicates that human values have 
risen from the lower realm of sense to the higher one of idea. 
Hence it is the inwardness of ethical progress which proposes 
the problem and promises its solution. Sensation is trans- 
ferred into ideation, perception into conception, and by 
what process? It is memory which reproduces the external 
impression as an internal image in a mind which by its func- 
tion of attention is adapted to noticing the community in the 
two forms of cognition. Memory and attention serve, like- 
wise, in changing percepts into concepts, whereby the con- 
crete is represented by the abstract. Now the attentive 
activity of the mind employs memory in connection with the 



1 88 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

transition from naturistic to characteristic morality. Cogni- 
tion preserves its unity in the midst of sensation and idea, 
percept and concept, and the ethical consciousness of mankind 
is as successful in the historical change from outer to inner 
interest. 

In the midst of his particular moral codes, man is still 
human, and his principle of desire, active upon the plane 
of nature, is animated by the motive of self-realization as 
a creature, while later his ideal of duty assumes the same 
significance, inasmuch as man now strives after self-realiza- 
tion as a character. The Spartan will be brave, the Athenian 
wise, the Roman just; humanity thus realizes itself in the 
manifold, while the various virtues unite in the human spirit 
which evokes them. Honesty cannot be without some refer- 
ence to the economic order, veracity is a virtue in connection 
with its social significance, while justice and benevolence 
arise as they are demanded by progressive, perfecting hu- 
manity which is the center about which these relative prin- 
ciples revolve. Man maintains his humanity in the midst 
of change, and the same striving for realization appears in 
connection with the incentives of sensation and the motives 
of ideation, in the age of nature and the age of culture. The 
contrast between hedonism and intuitionism, therefore, is no 
complete one which excludes community, for these constitute 
a parallelism of humanity which itself has not received 
adequate recognition. Man is superior to desire and duty, 
and will not follow concrete pleasure or abstract duty; he is 
in the world to achieve his humanity, and thus these other 
principles act only eccentrically upon him. 

The characteristic theory of morality is expressed directly 
in intuitionism, indirectly in rigorism. In the first instance 
we have a theory of life so far as its ethical ideals are con- 
cerned; in the second, there appears an attitude towards life 
as something which must be lived as well as surveyed in 
thought. Our examination of these principles will exhibit 
more than one point of contrast with the naturistic school, 
while it will serve to bring out the underlying principle of 
humanity. Like every other philosophical scheme, character- 
istic ethics must reveal a consistency with its own principles, 
as well as adaptability to the general plan manifest in our 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 189 

human striving, and it will be approved to the degree of 
perfection with which *it meets this double demand. 

4 CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS AS INTUITIONISM 

Just as the complementary term hedonism is so partial 
and exclusive as to indicate but a phase of naturistic ethics, 
so "intuitionism" must be accepted as a word which merely 
symbolizes the preliminary form of characteristic ethics. 
The unfolding of this second form will be seen to follow the 
analogy of the first one, in that an abrupt departure will be 
made from passive intuitionism to the active principle of 
duty, as was the case with hedonism which showed how 
necessary it was to find the secret of immediate activity in 
desire. Under the head of intuitionism, therefore, we must 
include two forms of characteristic morality; one centers in 
conscience which is finally expressed as a judgment of life, 
the other in freedom, which generates the law of duty. Be- 
fore this dual problem of characteristic ethics may be dis- 
cussed, the fuller meaning of intuition must be subjected to 
examination. Here it will be found that the theory in ques- 
tion reveals as much opposition to the idea of development in 
morality as favor to its supremacy in human life. The 
"intuition", which implies nothing in the way of excellence, 
is invented to offset any explanation of ethical ideals, and 
to yield immediate certainty and complete conviction. 

The psychology of intuition, which has received satis- 
factory treatment in aesthetics, has not been as successful in 
the field of ethics, and the possibilities which this form of 
knowledge presents have been overlooked in the interests of 
a very doubtful element called "common-sense." In modern 
philosophy, Spinoza, Richard Price, and Kant have called 
attention to the emphatic position which intuition occupies 
midway between sense and reason. The Ethics of Spinoza 
departs from its rationalism sufficiently to entertain the 
possibility of a third kind of knowledge which he calls 
scientia intuitiva, the discussion of which is carried on in 
the fifth part of the work (Props, xxv-xxxvm), wherein 
it is shown that intuition arises as the highest endeavor of 
the mind (xxv), where it promotes the highest kind of 



190 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

acquiescence (xxvn), and represents reality under the 
form of eternity (xxxi). Price uses the English term 
"intuition" and develops it under the opposing influences of 
Locke's empiricism and Cudworth's rationalism. Kant's 
complete view of Anschauung developed in the Kritik, finds 
a place in his theory of beauty, and the treatment of the 
problem in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" indicates how 
close is the connection between the critical and aesthetical 
forms of his system. Where one deduces time and space, 
as forms of knowledge derived neither from sense nor un- 
derstanding, the other develops taste and beauty as forms of 
sense which are universal, although without concepts. Kant's 
ethical system makes no provision for such a method of treat- 
ment, and it is only by accommodation that we may call it 
intuitionism. Its point of departure is not the understand- 
ing, but the will, while its influence is rigoristic rather than 
intuitional. 

Genuine intuitionism, whose principles were indicated 
in three forms of modern philosophy, has enjoyed no affilia- 
tion with the minor moral theory which bears the name. 
This school has exhibited intuition as a noli me tangere, and 
in its endeavor to place moral truth beyond dispute, it has 
placed it beyond reason. The result of such a method has 
been to produce fixed ideas, whereby conscience has under- 
gone petrifaction and duty has shown rigor mortis. No de- 
scriptive psychology was permitted to explain this esoteric 
faculty; no theory of knowledge was suffered to approach 
the oracle. Meanwhile, mental interest has been baffled, and 
the matter is made more than usually provoking because 
the problem whose solution is so important to man, does 
not seem to be so abysmal after all; for the mind which can 
discuss the forms of outer sense, like space and time, seems 
able to carry on its discussion within where are found the 
internal senses of beauty and conscience. Life is not all 
ethics, ethics is not all conscience; and it is only the minor 
morality which puts the moral sense in the supreme position. 
In the presence of living, growing humanity, ethics must 
break the silence, come out of its seclusion and seek to come 
abreast of the world. 



II 

CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS AND CONSCIENCE 

I— THE MORAL SENSE AND PLEASURE 

However different in content and value, both pleasure 
and conscience, which make possible the two forms of mor- 
ality called hedonism and intuitionism, must be treated as 
though they were organic to human nature in the form of 
sense. Their place is found in immediacy and it is by virtue 
of their felt quality that they dominate the mind. Both 
are concerned with individual interest, so that egoism may 
arise in connection with either one or the other; Butler puts 
conscience and self-love upon the same plane. The progress 
of hedonism was such as to suggest the necessity of some- 
thing more than pleasure, and at the risk of inconsistency, 
the school made room for another sense than that of pleasure 
in the form of altruism and that of moralism. Even the ego 
feels constrained to recognize the other ego, and cannot blind 
his eyes to the fact that imperceptible influences, in the form 
of detached ethical ideals, are working upon him. Of the 
two contrasted senses, neither one of which is final, however 
incontrovertible its testimony may be, pleasure relates man 
to the world of nature, conscience connects him with the 
world of humanity. Just as pleasure, which has such an 
inordinate influence within our minds, seems explicable only 
when we survey it as the point whose nature concentrates 
her influence over us, so conscience, with its extra-intensity, 
appears to be the vulnerable spot which the individual pre- 
sents toward humanity. Conscience further contrasts with 
the sense of pleasure upon the active as well as the passive 
side. As a sense, pleasure lends itself to activity and the 
exercises of power; it draws the individual out in the world 
of sense. Conscience usually acts in a negative manner and 
restrains the individual's powers, so that he who would 
succeed must not be too conscientious. 

191 



192 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

So careful is intuitionism with its terminology that a 
survey of the rise and development of "conscience" cannot 
fail to clarify the principles of the theory. For the most 
part, Grecian ethics succeeded in aligning the ideals of life 
without the aid of this factor, and it was not until the de- 
cline of ancient speculation and the commingling of Greek 
with Roman philosophy that conscience appeared. In itself, 
conscience is an ideal of decadent morality. According to 
Stobaeus (p. 192, 21), the term occurs in Periander and 
Bios. Diodorous (iv. 657) uses it to indicate consciousness 
as a whole. In speaking of the powers of kings with their 
equipment to reprove and punish, Epictetus says, "but to a 
Cynic, instead of arms and guards, it is conscience (awelSos) 
which gives this power." (Bk. m. Ch. xxi). Here is 
involved more psychological penetration, inasmuch as con- 
science is seen to imply compunction. The same inward- 
ness characterizes Cicero, who further elucidates the effect 
of remorse. "The guilty therefore must pay the penalty 
and bear the punishment; not so much those punishments 
inflicted by courts of justice, but of conscience, while the 
furies pursue and torment them, not with burning torches, 
but with remorse of Conscience." (Laws 1, 14). Con- 
science was never more than an eccentric element in the 
ethics of Stoicism, while in modern ethics its position is not 
the highest one among ethical categories. 

With all its security in human nature, conscience is not 
a category but a sentiment. The treatment of conscience 
from the beginning of modern ethics has been in the form of 
a sense, so that hedonists have not hesitated to employ it or 
rigorists to reject it as a final arbiter. Shaftesbury, who 
classifies human impulses as (1) natural public affections; 
(2) natural private affections; (3) unnatural affections (In- 
quiry, Bk. 11. pt. 1, § 3), finds it feasible to add a moral 
sense which he styles a "displeasing consciousness" and "re- 
ligious conscience.' , (lb. Bk. 11. pt. 2, § 1). Butler, who 
adopts this fourfold division of human nature and applies 
it to the interests of the intuitional school, raises conscience 
to a commanding position but does not fail to put reasonable 
self-love upon the same level, which is possible for him 
inasmuch as he believes that both dictate what is in accord- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 193 

ance with nature. In the treatment of the moral sense, he 
and Shaftesbury are practically agreed. The same leveling 
tendency appears with* Hume and Kant, who show more 
academic division than Butler and Shaftesbury. Hume's 
heteronomy and hedonism do not forbid his assertion that 
moral distinctions come from a "moral sense" (Treatise, 
Bk. in. pt. 1, Sec. 11). Kant rejects the notion that the 
fundamental moral principle can reside in feeling, and con- 
temptuously observes that a "supposed special sense" is ap- 
pealed to only by those who cannot think, but can only 
feel. (Meta. d. Sitten, s. 75). This sense, like that of 
self-love, is false since it fails to rest upon reason which 
furnishes man with the principles of morality (lb. s. 152) ; 
conscience, however, is a judicial function whose source is in 
reason alone (lb. s. 230). Kant's departure from con- 
science is a special sense to conscience as reason is but the 
counterpart of Hume's abandonment of reason for the sake 
of this more natural moral principle ; both show how natural 
it is to regard conscience as a sentiment. 

The progress of hedonism and intuitionism reveals the 
same subordination of conscience to the field of sense. T. H. 
Green ascribes to it the general function of arousing moral 
aspiration, and does not regard it as the arbiter of moral 
values, (Prolegomena, § 306), just as he admits that, where 
a man cannot be too good, he can be too conscientious, 
(lb. § 297). As an advanced intuitionist, he is as little 
inclined to deify conscience as the enlightened Sidgwick 
was to exalt happiness. Where one regards conscience as 
influential, the other believes virtue to have a "felicific ten- 
dency" (Methods of Eth. Bk. iy, Ch. hi, § 1). Parallel 
to this patronizing view of conscience on the part of Green 
is Leslie Stephen's adoption of the principle as a part of his 
naturalistic creed. (Science of Ethics, Ch. vm) ; indeed, 
this advocate of the "social organism" goes so far as to 
regard conscience as a "judgment of the whole character" 
(lb. p. 316), and yet relegates it to naturistic consciousness 
by making it to consist very largely of a sense of shame, 
(lb. Ch. vm, § 2). 

If these thinkers are at all typical they illustrate that 
tendency on the part of our opposed theories to fuse, as they 



194 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

suggest that their agreement upon the subject of conscience 
is due to the fact that conscience is a sense, not a rational 
judgment. Hence, hedonists may rise to its level without 
endangering their naturistic views, because intuitionism has 
placed it in such a low position. That conscience is a sense, 
rather than a dictum of reason, seems to be implied further 
in the plea for conscience as something intuitive. Now, of 
all our mental concerns, those of reason are least likely to be 
intuitive, since these are based upon concepts which are 
formed by generalization, judgments trained according to 
law, and inferences drawn from rule; while the products of 
sense in their simplicity and immediacy are more inclined 
toward the intuitive phase of consciousness. 

Here it may be asked how the idea of conscience adapts 
itself to the notion of intuition which is current in aesthetics. 
At first sight, it seems as though the latter claimed all the 
honor of this style of thinking, just as it bore the respon- 
sibility of it, but further reflection tends to show how ethics 
participates with aesthetics in this tertiary form of human 
knowledge. Do we have an emotion to explain or a judg- 
ment to justify? It would seem then as though conscience 
were best understood as a sense known to consciousness as 
an immediate feeling; from this, judgments may be elabo- 
rated just as they are in aesthetics, where a sense of ideal 
feeling enables the mind to pronounce judgment upon the 
beauty of an object. Apart from an appreciation of man's 
position in the world-whole of humanity, conscience will 
ever be an unknowable irritation. Its form is that of extra- 
sensitivity, and when its function is said to consist in approval 
and disapproval, its nature is seen to be somewhat akin to 
that of feeling with its qualities of pleasure and pain. To 
the intuitionist, who isolates conscience from the rest of 
consciousness, and assumes to find in its dictates something 
unwonted and authoritative, it must seem strange to find 
that his magisterial faculty can use only the language of 
pleasure-pain, when it turns "good" conscience and "bad" 
conscience into a pleasant approval or an unpleasant disap- 
proval. These emotions are symptoms of our human con- 
dition; they arise, not for their own sake, but for the sake 
of the one humanity in and about the individual. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 195 

2 — THE HUMANITY OF CONSCIENCE 

The conception 01 man that has guided us thus far in 
our examination of human conduct puts us in a position 
where, with intellectual consistency and ethical security, 
we may look upon human conscience as having the form of 
sense, whose significance is explicable, not in itself alone, 
but in connection with the enveloping world of humanity. 
The traditional view of conscience betrays a lack of fore- 
shortening which spoils the effect of the picture; a normal 
feature of man's moral life has been thrust forward in viola- 
tion of all perspective, and the retouching that the theory 
must undergo should occasion neither surprise nor sadness. 
Again and again we are called upon to see how man is 
seeking to emancipate himself from his native immediacy 
and effect the wholeness of his humanity, and hence we do 
not feel inclined to turn away from such an interpretation 
of life and admit that all consists in conscience. A theory 
of life based upon conscience could never account for that 
spontaneity of human effort which, in the midst of art and 
science, culture and civilization, preserves its spiritual unity. 
Conscience is as necessary to man as feeling, but approval 
and disapproval are no more the sovereign masters of human 
life than pleasure and pain. 

The advocate of conscience, who felt that to explain 
was to explain away, does not care to participate in life, for 
the first move on the part of the intuitionist was to render 
conscience inacessible. All this lay in the thought of an 
indisputable intuition, beyond both sense and understanding, 
while it involved a peculiar charm incident upon the air 
of mystery which enveloped the subject. As King Melch- 
izedek was "without father or mother, beginning or end of 
days", so the royalty of conscience was made to depend upon 
the alleged fact that conscience had never had a history. 
Further, the case of conscience is like that of Descartes' 
theory of the seat of the soul, which he found in the pineal 
gland, where he located the res cogitans, for the reason that 
the function of that innocent cerebral body would otherwise 
remain unknown. An important observer would be likely 
to declare that the important item in the argument con- 



196 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

cerning the moral sense was not the source, but the sanction 
of conscience ; that it was not a colorless psychological ques- 
tion, but an acute ethical problem. Nevertheless, the ques- 
tion was raised and while intuitionism has lost, impartial 
ethical theory has gained, by the discussion. 

Between the historic careers of these two ideas a distinct 
parallel is to be noted. Christianity and Stoicism together 
produce the principles of life in humanity in the form of the 
"Kingdom of God" and "world-citizenship" or cosmopoli- 
tanism. Such a development of concepts had the effect of 
quickening man's consciousness of his position in the world 
of humanity and did not fail to connect itself with the inner 
principle of conscience. With a plastic like Plato's Republic, 
there is no room for the contrast between individual and 
humanity, and hence no place for conscience; although the 
peculiar position of justice, which has no root in the three- 
fold division of the world or man and finds no appropriate 
class to administer it in the state, suggests the want of some 
such principle in idealistic ethical system. Where there is a 
sense of free humanity there is conscience ; where the ethical 
becomes universal it also assumes an internal form. Just as 
Plato's politics does not emancipate humanity and let it 
realize its inner life, so Aristotle's aesthetics of moderation 
does not admit of sufficient energy to provide a range for 
human activity. Hence both universal and inner ideals are 
wanting. 

Adam Smith was about the first to consider the ethical 
possibilities involved in the human relations between man 
and society, and his view, as expressed in his "Theory of 
Moral Sentiments", published exactly a century before Dar*- 
win's "Origin of Species", or in 1759, must be regarded as 
extraordinary, especially when it is remembered that his 
leading principle was the simple feeling of sympathy. Ac- 
cording to the theory, sympathy is something natural and 
shows itself in the instinctive fashion in which we exchange 
places with the sufferer (Pt. 1. Sect. 1. Ch. 1). Such 
sympathy is likewise mutual, so that by means of immediate 
feeling one can estimate the contents of another's mind, and 
thus by loving and resenting one can judge of love and 
resentment in another. (lb. Ch. 11). But such sympathy, 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 197 

which forms the bond between souls, is limited, and for 
some reason we cannqt always respond to the feeling which 
the other person exhibits as his own. He who, in the excess 
of emotion longs for our sympathy, "must flatten the sharp- 
ness of its natural tone in order to reduce it to harmony 
and concord with the emotions of those who are about him" 
(lb. Ch. m-iv). Now that which limits sympathy is a 
sense of propriety. When Smith speaks of the kinds of 
action, which in individuals tend to arouse sympathy or to 
prevent it, he introduces the higher notion of merit. Pro- 
priety arises from a direct sympathy with its feelings and 
motives of the person who acts; merit is occasioned by an 
indirect sympathy with the gratitude or resentment of the 
person who is acted upon. (Pt. 11. Sect. 1. Ch. v). Where, 
under the influence of sympathy — natural, mutual, limited, — 
propriety leads to merit, merit also leads to duty. In this 
climax of the moral theory, the author changes from sym- 
pathy with the other to sympathy with the self, wherein 
he finds it possible to divide the ego into two persons, one 
who judges and the other who is judged, and it is the 
"impartial spectator" within the breast which at last finds 
itself in the place of conscience. This judicial function 
consists of sympathy with self, which produces self-approval 
(Pt. in. Ch. 1) ; not only does the conscience of sympathy 
hold the position of authority (lb. Ch. in.), but it lays 
down rules which are the "commands and laws of the 
Deity" (lb. Ch. v). 

Darwin does not advance as far as Adam Smith in urging 
the divine character of the moral law, yet he speaks of con- 
science as equivalent to "that short but imperious word 
ought", although his own interpretation seems to imply 
merely the "consciousness of the existence of a persistent 
instinct" (Descent of Man, Ch. hi). With his well- 
marked social instincts, a mental ability to reproduce images 
of past acts and their consequences, the gift of language 
which makes possible the expression of popular opinion, as 
also the principle of habit as a guide for conduct, man ac- 
quires a moral sense whose basis is sociability. The supre- 
macy of the social instincts is found in their survival over 
the purely selfish ones, and upon this princiole of persistence 



198 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the whole theory of moral sense seems to hinge. In man, 
this supreme social instinct is able to overcome the selfish 
one, because it is more definitely present in the mind by way 
of reflection ; for we are unable to recall the feeling of hunger 
or even the sense of self-preservation, however strong these 
instincts may be, while our position in the social order keeps 
before the mind distinct ideas of sociability. When memory 
compares the faint impressions of previous hunger, or other 
personal instinct which has been gratified, with the ever- 
present idea of sympathy, he feels as though he, in his 
selfishness, has suffered a weak instinct to conquer a strong 
one which will occasion a sense of retribution within him. 

( Ib -> 

Schopenhauer stands midway between Smith and Darwin 
in time (1819), and transcends both of them in the con- 
sistency of his theory of conscience. From his philosophical 
point of view, the contrast between the individual and the 
universal in the Will-to-Live is the difference between the 
phenomenal and real order of things in the world, so that 
the ego is not separated from the life of others, except in ap- 
pearance; for it is the one will-to-live which appears in 
them all, so that he who does wrong is not wholly different 
from him who suffers that wrong. Only a veil of illusion 
separates him who inflicts pain from him who endures it; 
and when this curtain is penetrated man becomes the victim 
of his own misdeed in the form of remorse. The "secret 
"presentiment" that one is not really separated from the one 
will-to-live contains the secret of conscience, which informs 
man that in vicious action he is really turning his weapon 
upon himself and must suffer at his own hands {Welt ah 
Wille u. Vorstellung, § 65). Where Schopenhauer's treat- 
ment of the problem is wanting in psychological elements, 
whose place is taken by mythological ones, it is marked by 
a sense of that unity which pervades humanity expressed as 
this is in the form of eternal justice (§63). At the same 
time he is able to explain away the idea of a fixed egohood 
by regarding the principle of individuation as illusory. 

There is something about the sensitivity of human nature 
that makes such views of conscience plausible if not con- 
vincing. Where conscience itself as an intuition gives no 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 199 

explanation of its peculiar sway over man, it is not out of 
place to suggest that instincts like sympathy and sociability 
have some bearing upon the question of approval and dis- 
approval, and when the dialectic of Schopenhauer introduces 
the ego in its individuality and the world in its unity, we 
feel that the spirit of the theory is worthy and needs only to 
be related to our consciousness to be acceptable. These views 
are well-meaning and will not be confused with the morbid 
sentiments of a Mandeville or a Nietzsche. "Bad consci- 
ence" is something more than that suggestion of inferiority 
which Nietzsche's notion of "slave morality" would in- 
sinuate, while "good conscience" has about it a sense of 
healthy human approval which no "master morality" can 
justify. Nevertheless, without some broad rationale of 
conscience, the isolated and almost arbitrary character of 
that inner sense is likely to arouse suspicion in the mind of 
the remorseful man who feels that he suffers unduly, and 
the social explanation of the sense seems fraught with a 
strange sense of liberation from the ideal. Our own age 
reveals the spectacle of a populace which had been dominated 
by an artificial conception of conscience, but now begins to 
dream of liberty from convention and a desire to re-cast its 
popular definitions of virtue and vice. To feel the serious- 
ness of this crisis, one need only turn the pages of our 
decadent dramatists to feel somewhat of the same longing for 
life as such apart from the conventions of conscience. Now 
the remedy for this unhappy condition of humanity is to be 
found in a more temperate view of conscience which need 
not be expected to assume the whole burden of human striv- 
ing. And then, with this just limitation of a perfectly 
natural sense, there may come a healthy explanation of it in 
connection with one humanity which evokes it in the indivi- 
dual's heart. 

3 — THE OUTER CONFLICT OF THE EGO WITH HUMANITY 

Butler could do nothing with conscience and self-love 
because he saw in man only the ego and the world of nature 
in which man lives. To be in harmony with nature was 
thus to realize both the ego and his conscience, but the 



200 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

"magisterial faculty" was still wanting in explanation. It 
is humanity, however, and not nature which is best adapted 
to account for this occult factor. The mystery of con- 
science is as great as, but no greater than, the mystery of 
pleasure; both are concerned with man's position in the 
human, natural order of being. Conscience is not a purely 
subjective principle possessed by man in his individuality, nor 
a wholly objective one which belongs to the race. It is a 
sentiment which arises when the individual, whose humanity 
should lead him to rise above the natural order, somehow 
turns against the world of humanity within him. The 
empirical view of conscience, which substitutes emotions 
like shame or sympathy for the fixed, objective order of 
human being, does not advance beyond the position this 
occupies at the beginning; for instead of explaining con- 
science as a philosophical problem, it gives some suggestions 
concerning its reaction upon the individual. With the em- 
pirical explanation at hand, conscience still remains a mys- 
tery, although the key to this has been suggested in con- 
nection with the order to which man belongs. Nature has 
determined to have man realize the immediate purpose of 
his being, and has thus given him an abnormal sense of 
pleasure and pain; humanity has been equally anxious to 
have man fulfill the ultimate demands of his existence, and 
has thus endowed him with a surplus of sensitivity to ap- 
proval and disapproval, whereby conscience has secured a 
firm hold upon her human subject. 

The exaggerated influence of conscience upon man makes 
possible the dramatic possibilities of the sentiment, and 
among the other fundamental emotions which lend them- 
selves to the poet, the sense of compunction and remorse is 
by no means secondary. Yet it is the Christian, and not the 
classic poet who is permitted to avail himself of this senti- 
ment, since it was first in Christianity that the individual 
was set in conscious relation to the surrounding order of 
humanity. Yet why should conscience adapt itself to the 
technical demands of the drama? The answer to this is to 
be found in the fact that conscience concerns the individual's 
relation to the rest of the human order. When, therefore, the 
drama attempts to solve its problem, which consists in ad- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 201 

justing the lyrical subject to the epic situation, it finds that 
its human character is, strangely sensitive to a feeling of ap- 
proval and disapproval which arises within man when he 
acts in agreement or disagreement with the demands of the 
human order about him. Hence excessive emotion and ex- 
traordinary action may be produced by involving this ethical 
form of emotionalism. Conscience realizes the intuitive 
ideal inasmuch as it assumes a universal form in the midst 
of common elements of experience. How strange it is that, 
when the intuitionist seeks to display the attributes of this 
marvellous faculty, he can only adopt the hedonic language 
of pleasure and pain and speak of a "sense of approval and 
disapproval"! Why should conscience express its supreme 
dictates in such secular language when it is supposed to 
stand alone in a sacerdotal position ? Only by an appeal 
to sense may the essence of conscience be expressed, and it 
is here that the emptiness of intuitionism appears in its most 
painful form. But, at the same time, conscience turns ap- 
proval and disapproval into something more than mere 
pleasure and pain. These make possible judgments whose 
universal and necessary forms raise conscience to the level 
of a spiritual rather than a sensuous principle, because they 
show that conscience is not calculated to arouse mere emo- 
tion, but to suggest ethical judgments of good and bad, and 
long after an individual has ceased to feel the sway of con- 
science as a source of feeling, he remains under the dominion 
of certain moral notions from which there may seem to be 
no escape. 

In the inevitable conflict between the ego and the world 
of persons, the peculiar play of inner forces reveals some- 
what of the operation of conscience, which does not act 
independently but avails itself of other mental processes. 
The individual, whose pleasure is his own, who must live 
his own life, and who is thus encased in a natural form of 
egohood, treats his own interests in an intense fashion which 
assumes the active and personal form of passion. So vigorous 
is the impulse to assert self, so immediate the interest of 
self, and so obvious the validity of self as an idea, that it 
would seem impossible for conscience to dislodge the ego 
from its entrenched position. Our egohood is the most 



202 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

evident thing in the world. We have no criterion of truth 
or reality but a subjective one, no sense of values except the 
immediate form of appreciation which is found in the self. 
Thus, in thinking and acting, man is at the mercy of self- 
hood, and nothing but another and stronger form of self- 
hood will drive him from this position. Why the individual 
should be so sensitive to conscience, why his personal will 
should bend before a sentiment, is so mysterious that the 
intuitionist has long felt secure in his position of invincible 
ignorance. 

Conscience is consciousness of humanity. "Good con- 
science" is a sense of harmony with the ideal of humanity as 
entertained by the ego in its life among persons. "Bad 
conscience" is due to a conflict between the acts and desires of 
the individual and the ideal demands of the human order. 
Thus, in a certain sense, conscience is consistency. The 
intuitionist's hesitation to accept any explanation of con- 
science has about it something more than the innate rever- 
ence for mystery, for the particular form of the explanatory 
theory usually involves a departure from the ideal, inasmuch 
as the outstanding social order, which is supposed to evoke 
the peculiar sense of ethical responsibility, is surveyed em- 
pirically as something not wholly distinct from nature. 
Conscience, however, is not mere conventionalism, but de- 
pends upon a harmony between the ethical subject, as he is 
known to himself in inner experience, and the ideal order 
of humanity which is above both its social and individual 
forms. A given condition of society could never evoke in the 
individual the enduring influence of conscience; indeed, a 
fixed yet growing order of things is the effect, not the cause, 
of the world of conscience. Naturistic ethics is anxious to 
relate its subject to some kind of an order, hence it speaks 
of a compact-theory by which it seeks to account for man's 
responsibility to an external system. Opponents of the 
notion of social contract emphasize the inherent and ra- 
tional validity of conscience, but none the less do they postu- 
late an order of things which can only be regarded as the 
world of conscience. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 203 

4 THE INNER CONFLICT BETWEEN SENTIMENT AND PAS- 
SION 

In the history of ethics, it was the idea of humanity 
which, in Christianity and Stoicism, made possible a sense 
of conscience. Modern thought realized this in theory 
when it considered the ego apart from society and saw 
how influential was the sense of human sympathy. Yet this 
contrast between two conflicting views of the human order 
is not a purely external one which may be surveyed ob- 
jectively; it is real and internal and is capable of consistent 
psychological expression. The appeal of self to man is direct 
and vigorous coming through the will; the influence of 
society is indirect and correspondingly weak in the form 
of intellectualism which it assumes. Such a distinction in- 
volves the contrast between sentiment and passion. In man, 
the conflict between ego and world is thus an internal one in 
which the individual is represented by passion, society by 
sentiment. These two moments of human emotion may be 
distinguished by observing that passion is made up of feeling 
and will, where sentiment combines feeling and idea. In 
the vigorous form which human life assumes in the midst 
of the rude forces of nature, where the struggle to live in- 
volves constant action on the part of the ego, it would 
seem as though altruistic sentiments were destined to be 
ignored by the individual in his personal life. But nature 
has guarded the interests of the species, while humanity has 
made it necessary for man to consider more than his private 
interests. Where egoistic passion is marked by intensity, 
social sentiment is enduring, and however strong the im- 
mediate action of the will may be, the mind is able to subdue 
it by means of the attribute of duration. At this time, we 
do not raise the question whether natural will or rational 
reflection is destined to rule the world of persons, but simply 
point to the case of conscience as evidence of the supremacy 
of intellect in the form of social sentiment. 

Owing to the peculiar steadfastness of reason, the fierce 
attacks of egoistic passion are withstood by the prevailing 
sentiment of a world of persons. He who would inflict 
his selfish purposes upon mankind must break through 



2o 4 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the confines of the world of humanity, as this is indelibly 
written upon his own mind. That which produced the 
individual and gave his life its significance is not likely to 
leave him to his own devices, nor will it set him adrift in his 
individuality without advising him as to the order to which 
he belongs. Hence, man cannot live without considering his 
human environment, the consciousness of which is ever ready 
to arise in stinging contrast to the petty plans which the 
narrow-minded individual is seeking to carry out. Man's 
impulses come and go upon occasion, but his place in society 
is a steadfast one, the consciousness of which is ever deepen- 
ing. Memory retains a vast array of ideas which lead the 
individual to recall the order to which he belongs, as well 
as the way in which moral cause and effect have been active 
in the past; but this same function of recollection does not 
serve him so well when he seeks to review the advantages 
of pleasures as he experienced them. In the memory of man 
the human ideal is secure because sentiments are retained 
and reproduced in a way that passions are not. 

5 RESENTMENT AND REMORSE 

As a special example of this conflict between the ego and 
the world of humanity, we may take the case of anger or 
resentment. In the passionate combination of feeling and 
will, the emotion of anger blinds the individual to the 
reality and claim of the human order as represented by him 
who is the object of his spite, while its intensity leads him 
to exhibit his wrath in the form of stinging blow or in- 
sulting word. This fierce attack upon one's own social senti- 
ment involves a warfare between an intense personal feeling 
and a weak, yet enduring, social instinct, with the result 
that the severer passion soon exhausts itself, leaving the 
field of consciousness to the sentiment which contains the 
image of all humanity. There enters in remorse in the 
form of a wounded social sentiment, and the individual is 
stung by the contrast between his vicious self and the human 
order which he has sought to injure. Apparently no other 
explanation can be found for that mysterious and subtle 
sense of compunction which arises as a contrast and conflict 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 205 

between ego and humanity. Conscience weakens the will 
because it represents the rich and varied interests of society, 
before which the pett^ purposes of the individual seem vain 
indeed. What holds good in the case of anger, is valid 
also for all wrong-doing which relates only to the man in 
his attitude toward the world. Only humanity can do 
wrong or be wronged, and he who experiences wrong in 
either an active or passive fashion finds it identified with 
the inner sense of his humanity. Only in humanity can 
pain and pleasure have any ethical significance, and how 
vain is it for the hedonic naturist, with his feeble equipment 
of feeling and desire, to seek to explain the gigantic con- 
sciousness of wrong which has ever made its impression 
upon poetry and religion. He who witnesses the display of 
anger in another is grieved at the thought that an in- 
dividual can so turn against humanity, even though the 
spectator is not personally injured by the attack. Even 
he who is the offended party is able to feel something 
more than an immediate personal grievance in the form of 
a remote sense of a wounded nature, common to both par- 
ties, which the quarrel involves. Our enemies injure hu- 
manity through us and we are thus led to feel a double 
sorrow incident upon the individual and universal wrong 
which we are suffering. 

The sentiment that conquers man is that which involves 
this worldhood, and the speculative power by which the 
mind represents the world of natural forms now exercises its 
office anew in bringing before the consciousness of the in- 
dividual the human world of values. This very difference 
in quantity, between universality in the human order and 
particularity in the individual, is sufficient to arouse con- 
science by contrasting the august plan of the kingdom of 
humanity with the trifling gratifications desired by the 
isolated individual. Constituted as man is with social capa- 
city, a sense of shame, sentiment, and imagination, it is no 
easy task for him to confine himself in the case of egohood 
and live out his own life in its littleness. His peace of 
mind demands that he shall lose himself in the total order 
about him, and acts of unselfishness often have no other 
motive than the desire on the part of the ego to lose sight 



206 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

of himself for the time being. The implicit sublimity 
of the encompassing human order reveals itself to the 
individual in forms of extensity and power, whereby he is 
led to see how insignificant he is in the world of humanity. 
Egoism is possible only in a system which excludes con- 
sideration of any universal order for man, while the 
realization of a spiritual domain afflicts the ego with a 
self-hatred which can be relieved only by an impersonal 
participation in the full order of human life. 

In the midst of this experience which, in spite of its 
sublime setting, is common in human life, it will be found 
that conscience plays its part instinctively with a minimum 
of intelligence. He who has once appreciated the warm 
humanity of approval and disapproval, and realizes with 
what general forms of expression the surrounding world of 
humanity appeals to man, will never plague himself with 
casuistical doubts concerning the infallibility of conscience. 
Our knowledge of the natural world depends upon sense- 
perception and in spite of sense-deception we know nature; 
our knowledge of the human order depends upon conscience, 
yet we know humanity through an imperfect sense of right 
and wrong. An infallible conscience which ever dictates 
what is right and wrong is a chimera, and he who would 
take a simple human sense and try to reduce it to mathe- 
matical exactness is far from the spirit of the inner life. But 
conscience gains rather than loses when, instead of imitating 
the exact prismatic nature of the world of outer forms, it 
participates in the human world of values. 

6 CONSCIENCE AND NON-RESENTMENT 

With the recognition of conscience as the direct con- 
sciousness of humanity, there has arisen another principle 
whose ethical essence consists in the same human element; 
it is the religious ideal of non-resentment. Inasmuch as 
both spring from an acute sense of humanity, it is advan- 
tageous to indicate their mutual relation as they participate 
in a common world of human life and imply ideal obliga- 
tions and occasion ideal pains. Man's superiority to nature 
comes out clearly in this double sense of humanity, which 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 207 

appears in the presence of spiritual remorse and the absence 
of natural resentment ; t were life purely natural and humanity 
only hedonic there would be no explanation for these ideal 
standards. The presence of such principles reassures the 
moralist, and convinces him that the ideals of immediacy 
are not the only ones in a mind whose calculations involve 
considerations so remote from nature as to lie within a 
purely human realm where they receive a human value. 
The fact of conscience and of non-resentment is evidence 
that such a realm exists, and only consistent treatment of 
these human ideals is required to reduce such an order to 
consistency. 

The victory of humanity over the ego, which society 
achieves through conscience, appears in the religious principle 
of non-resentment. Here the individual is lifted out of 
his egohood into the pure and impersonal realm of humanity, 
whose value is set up as supreme in the world of activity. 
Viewed from within, non-resentment is the anticipation of 
remorse, and is influential only in a mind whose human 
sensibilities have been quickened in such a way that the 
subject is able to evacuate the sense of remorse which must 
follow if he give way to wrong or resentment. As an ideal, 
it represents the climax of humanity in the consciousness 
of man who is enabled to see the human order in its unity, 
and thus is led to realize that resentment is wrong in itself, 
because it must ever be expressed toward a human creature. 
It involves truly human values and tolerates no expediency 
which would do wrong that good might? come. Non- 
resentment is also the perfection of conscience, whose com- 
mon office it is to approve of right and disapprove of wrong, 
but which now is raised above the pettiness of such conflicts 
and is allowed to suffuse the whole being of the human 
subject. In this manner, the ideal of non-resentment in- 
volves a reversal of the usual order of conscience, where 
the aggressor feels remorse for the injury inflicted upon his 
fellow; for non-resentment acts vicariously as the conscience 
of the other man who is strangely wanting in compunction. 
Where one's own evil deed causes sorrow in both the doer 
and sufferer, inasmuch as conscience repeats the pain in the 
heart of him who has done wrong, the pleasure which the 



208 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

conscienceless man takes in injuring another is well nigh 
reflected in the other who resolves to feel no pain in the 
midst of his ill-treatment, and refuses to suffer the wrong 
which would naturally entail resentment. Such is the irony 
of humanity that, in one case, it expresses a malicious pleasure 
in the pain which another feels, and then reverses the process 
in the form of another unnatural feeling and almost takes 
pleasure in contemplating the pain that another inflicts upon 
one. In spite of the paradoxical condition which is involved 
in this reversal of natural pain and pleasure, it is a matter 
of common experience that, with a sensible person, who, 
through religion or reflection, has found his place in the 
world, there is less pain in the mind of him who suffers 
pain than in that of him who inflicts it. Hence the con- 
clusion that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. 

The peculiar idealism which ever envelops the problem 
of remorse toward self and resentment toward another ap- 
pears in the form of detached or disinterested vices. These 
unhappy tendencies, which led Butler (Sermons, Preface) 
to class them as the lowest of passions because of their 
disinterested nature, are recognizable in the form of malice 
and envy. Where much emphasis is placed upon the ideal 
in virtue, it is well to consider the ideal in vice; that is, an 
evil quality in the subject which sets him at variance with 
another even when no advantage accrues to the individual. 
And in such cases of disinterested vice, the freedom of 
humanity from nature and the claim of immediate advan- 
tage appear in a form which is as convincing as it is dis- 
tressing to contemplate. Now malice arises where one 
takes pleasure in another's pain, envy where he feels pain 
at another's pleasure. Such unnatural feelings, which 
minister as little to egoism as to altruism, reveal man in 
contrast to his humanity, where he fails to assume a proper 
relation to the world which contains him. In his inability 
or unwillingness to assume universal interests which would 
unify him with the world of humanity, he feels these 
passions which are all too human and wholly unknown in 
nature. Man's very maliciousness thus identifies his being 
with a higher order, and the unnaturalness of his vice 
indicates how the opposite virtues of sympathy and non- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 209 

resentment relate him to a human order of being. 

7 — THE POSSIBILITY OF MALEVOLENCE 

The unique quality of humanity appears in vice as well 
as virtue, therefore, and the place of conscience is seen more 
clearly when the axe is laid to the root of human bitterness. 
Only man is malicious; only man is capable of vice; for the 
sub-human forms of life permit no unity and universality, 
which make the moral life of man what it is. Corruptio 
optimi pessima — hence human hatred expresses the lowest 
depth of sin. For this reason, the exaggerated activity of 
conscience need cause no surprise, and when one sees how 
the demands of humanity are such as to forbid all vicious 
egoism, he will accept the function of conscience as a 
necessary but inferior phase of the ethical life. The restraint 
of nature must anticipate the positive development of 
humanity, and it is conscience which weakens one part of 
man that another may grow strong. 

In the literature of non-resentment, no systematic theory 
of the ideal is outlined, and it seems to be by sheer religious 
insight that the seer is led to mark the presence of the 
principle. The general presumption seems to be that if man 
is aware of his presence in an extra-natural order, whatever 
the particular nature of that order may be, lie will tend to 
view his life in another light, will assume new standards 
and perform new duties. Taoism presents a nihilistic 
system of things and counsels non-requital of injury as 
something which involves the acme of inaction. Hence, 
when it is said, "It is the way of Tao to requite injury with 
kindness" (Tao Teh King, Ch. lxiii), it is also pointed 
out that Tao, which involves a negative conception of being, 
implies inaction as the ideal of life. The Bhagavad-Gita 
follows a similar line of argument and praises the disciple 
who, in a complete indifference which knows no desire or 
dismay, joy or fear, love or hate, renounces the hatred of 
enemies (Ch. xn). Buddhism and the Wisdom literature 
of the Old Testament proceed inward to a psychological 
principle and observe the effect of non-resentment upon him 
who would naturally expect requital of injury done. Thus 



210 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the Dhamma-Pada declares, "Hatred ceases not by hatred, 
but hatred ceases only by love" (Ch. i), while the Book of 
Proverbs counsels the seeker after wisdom to feed the enemy 
and heap coals of fire upon his head, as if to change his 
attitude of malevolence. Finally, the New Testament dis- 
cusses the same ideals of love in place of hate and non- 
resistance in place of revenge as though they were organic 
to the Kingdom of God, for they are surveyed in a universal 
light and are not sanctioned according to any practical 
principle of law. 

In distinction from ethics, religion possesses a positive 
form expressed in a social institution like the church, just as it 
allies itself with a metaphysical order of being. When this 
metaphysical method is applied to life, it results in creating 
an ideal realm of benevolence which does not fail to assert 
itself as motive in the mind of the disciple, who feels that 
he owes allegiance to an ideal order of things wherein utility 
and other practical consequence are of no avail. Considered 
in ethical fashion, it is man's inherent relation to the world 
of humanity which involves him in the extra-natural obliga- 
tions and renders him subject to a law which is beyond wis- 
dom and justice. By means of mere reform man could 
accomplish the practical result of remorse and repentance, 
just as the practical desire to keep the peace might lead one 
to refrain from retaliation, but the sense of humanity, which 
habitually idealizes itself and views its relations as thoroughly 
self-contained, does not rest content with any temporary ad- 
justment of person to person, but so invades the mind of the 
ethical subject that he cannot rest until he has placed him- 
self in right relations with the order of his own being. To 
know that one has incurred no enemity from without and 
to feel none within is the ideal human desire which seeks 
to render the individual at one with humanity. 

No harm can come from a sense of conscience which 
insures one against all resentment from others and from 
himself, just as nothing but satisfaction results from a sense 
of pleasure which is devoted to securing benefit from nature. 
But where pleasure becomes a positive end and leads man 
to will it for itself, and where conscience is similarly drawn 
away from its position, in humanity, only defeat can ensue 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 211 

for him who has thus given himself up to morbid pleasure 
and pain. Both natural pleasure and the pain of com- 
punction weaken the will and retard the process of human 
striving whose purpose is the realization of man, and he who 
grasps at immediate pleasure or, on the other hand, is re- 
strained by the pain of remorse has failed to appreciate the 
value of that serene humanity which should possess his soul. 
Humanity has determined that man should strive, and what- 
ever interferes with this impulse to assert one's selfhood and 
worldhood is to be condemned. Can there be any doubt 
that Bohemianism, as known in the old world and the new, 
has softened the moral fibre of the will, or that British 
Puritanism, in its Anglo-American forms has been similarly 
forbidding to the progress of genuine humanity ? Conscience 
has ever been eccentric; for which reason the mind with 
naturistic tendencies felt free to relegate it to a lower place 
in his table of motives, while the plodding moralist has 
suffered his being to lose its poise. The remedy for this 
critical situation is to be found in a view which requires of 
conscience a mere sense of what is in accordance with an 
ever-striving humanity. 



Ill 

CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS AND RECTITUDE 

I MORAL LIFE IN REASON 

The tendency of sensation to pass over into idea and 
the reproduction of mental life in the form of memory make 
possible a form of moral life in idea. When we recall how 
hard it was for the hedonist to account for human action 
upon the basis of pleasure, it will be seen that a view of 
life according to the imperceptible involves no excess of 
idealism. The human mind is not at all devoted to the life 
of immediacy, and the inevitable tendency to reflect inclines 
man to a life removed from direct contact with the world; 
moreover, the principle of symbolism enters to make a certain 
definite course of conduct stand for various forms of human 
effort, so that life according to the general ideal of virtue 
is no more remarkable metaphysically than life according to 
a general experience of pleasure. In the midst of this, asso- 
ciation enters in to bind a certain feeling to a convenient form 
of representation in idea, and the cardinal qualities of tem- 
perance, courage, benevolence, and justice are only so many 
nuclei about which cluster rich forms of conduct in the 
manifold. Since man is in nature and is destined to remain 
her creature, in some sense of that term, it is to be expected 
that feelings should arise and become factors in his existence ; 
hence hedonism expresses some degree of that humanism 
which invests mankind. In the same way, it is no matter 
of surprise that a detached being like man should introduce 
ideas of his own, and having created them should live ac- 
cording to them. Among such ideas are beauty, knowledge 
and virtue, or the right. 

In the case of these ethical ideals, we find that we do 
not come upon them suddenly, but with a valuable form 
of preparation incident upon conscience, whose place in 

212 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 213 

humanity is almost beyond dispute. To make the transition 
from pleasure to virtue would be abrupt and the way there- 
unto would be forbidding indeed; but as pleasure finds its 
significance in a world of nature, so conscience reverts to a 
world of humanity whence comes also a sense of right and 
wrong, unknown in the natural order where nothing is for- 
bidden or permitted. For this reason the idea of right must 
be discussed in connection with conscience and not in com- 
petition with pleasure, the mind of man which interprets his 
remorse and condemns his resentment may now be expected 
to express itself more directly in the form of a doctrine of 
right. 

The ideal of right forms the counterpart of conscience 
whose nature is found in inner sense. Conscience does not 
tell us of anything beyond itself, but in a general way arouses 
man to a sense of his humanity, whereby he is enabled to 
form clear ideas of right and wrong. Where conscience is 
composed of feeling plus idea in the form of sentiment, the 
right unites idea with idea to form judgment; the analogy 
to this is found in the psychology of cognition, where sensa- 
tion becomes ideation. To account for the intelligence of 
moral relations, philosophy has appealed to the understanding 
with the aim of showing how readily the data of conscious- 
ness fall into the forms of the intellect. Such an ambition 
is represented most characteristically by Socrates, who con- 
tends that virtue can be conceived and communicated accord- 
ing to definition, as also by Kant who leads his categories 
from the field of defeat in speculative reason to the field of 
victory in practical reason. With these two heroes of the 
moral world-order, there may be observed a common disdain 
of speculative problems which leads to an excessive regard for 
practical ones, as if one could say, Virtue have I loved, but 
truth have I hated. But for all this enthusiasm over sheer 
morality, the fact remains that judgments of right stand in 
need of the justification required by judgments of reality. 

For this reason, man cannot discuss his ethical problems 
in any spirit of moral seclusion, but must come out into the 
living world of persons and survey his cherished ideals in 
the midst of warm instincts and natural tendencies. The 
principle of continuity, which carries man onward from 



214 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

an original naivete, to a full humanity, affords insight into 
the connection between the immediate and ultimate, and 
shows how interest in pleasure develops into an interest in 
virtue. If man has actually passed from nature to culture, 
from barbarity to civilization, there have been inner changes 
in view and in sentiment which have accompanied these outer 
transformations in occupation and motive, whereby virtue 
has arisen contemporary with the unfolding of humanity as a 
form of consciousness. In nature the expedient takes the 
place of the right, and conditional morality must wait until 
there is opportunity before absolute right and wrong can be 
made the objects of desire and aversion. At the same time, in 
an age of civilization, it is fruitless to seek a reduction of 
virtues to primitive utilities, and the perfected state of man 
is as devoted to the right as the primitive condition was 
given up to necessity. Two general views of rectitude be- 
came possible; one the product of a rationalism which seeks 
to account for ethics by appealing to reason; the other the 
natural outcome of human consciousness in its search after 
ideals. 

These contrasted views of rectitude are quite in keeping 
with the two methods of treating conscience. Where the 
older view surveyed conscience in an airless landscape as a 
clearly outlined intuition, the newer view finds it draped in 
the atmosphere of humanity where its form is seen as sense. 
So the ideal of rectitude appears dogmatically in the form 
of autonomy; or more critically as a human but disinterested 
regard for what is noble and meritorious. Where autono- 
mous ethics exalts an analytical judgment of the form, 
"Virtue is virtue," the more humanistic view aims at 
synthetic judgment and asserts, "Virtue is something human." 
When we have seen how fruitless is the attempt to establish 
autonomous judgments which forbid all human interest, we 
shall be able to appreciate how great is the problem of 
ethical judgment in general, and shall then find opportunity 
to develop the rich synthetic judgment of rectitude that 
arises naturally in the inner development of human con- 
sciousness. For apart from the several methods of autonomy 
and intuitionism, it is still possible to deduce rectitude as also 
to find a place for virtue. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 215 

2 — RECTITUDE AS AUTONOMY 

Where conscience assumes the form of sentiment, recti- 
tude appears as a judgment. Ancient ethics asserted its faith 
in man's ability to pursue the path of conduct in something 
more than an instinctive way of elaborating the ideal of 
virtue, while modern ethics has expressed a similar faith in 
the norm of rectitude. Hence in the usual fashion of mor- 
ality, one may say, "Courage is a virtue," and "Honesty is 
right;" but the attempt to detach these from human experi- 
ence and render them self-evident propositions involves in- 
surmountable contradiction. Both autonomous rectitude and 
isolated conscience are far removed from the spirit of 
humanity, and however inclusive they seem to be it is safe to 
assume that they are not only concentric with that humanity 
but circumscribed by it. As with rectitude so also with 
virtue whose force is practically the same. The predicate, 
right, is so conceived as to include virtue as the subject, 
so that the judgment becomes an identical one. Judgments 
of right are thus given up to an analytical form whose 
practical worth is open to serious question, although it must 
be conceded that this phase of ethics deserves the credit for 
having established the possibility of an ethical function of 
judgment. 

In Greek philosophy, the development of ethical judgment 
became a problem as soon as Socrates made possible the con- 
cept, in the form of ethical definition. This question was 
taken up by the Megarian School where Euclid united the 
ethical ideal of Socrates with the metaphysical doctrine of 
Parmenides. The good thus becomes the one true being, 
however various may be the names applied to it, and any 
attempt to describe it must be in terms of identity. It was 
this notion which led Stilpo to throw doubt upon the possi- 
bility of judgment, and he inclines toward sophistry as Euclid 
did toward the Eleatic doctrine. So perfect is the unity of 
being that every statement of relation assumes the form of 
an identical proposition which forbids all progress in knowl- 
edge, (cf. Windleband, Hist, of Anc. Philos. § 27.) 
Such a view witnessed a practical culmination in the 
nihilistic ideal of a7rd$eia. Among the Germans, Kant has not 



216 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

failed to rehabilitate the Socratic ideal with certain com- 
plexities incident upon his own moralic method. Kant saw 
that there was a humanity which had value and dignity, 
just as there was a morality that was amenable to right 
and duty (cf. Meta. d. Sitten, S. 65), and it was only the 
lack of freedom which prevented him from giving his 
judgments of right more content than his notion of autonomy 
would allow. This logic advances to the synthetical ideal 
of judgment, while his ethics halts upon the field of the 
analytical, and habitually reveals an inclination to cast out 
all warmth of life even to moral feeling itself as something 
heteronomous and spurious (Meta. d. Sitten, S. 71-72). 

From the usual standpoint of autonomy, which is that 
of rationalism, it seems impossible to invest virtue with any 
cardinal content, so that the defender of this form of faith 
is forced to uphold a doctrine of life without reality, just as 
the cramped position of the hedonist led him to a life without 
ideality. Autonomy is wanting in content because it has no 
worthy resources of which it may avail itself in attributing 
significance to morality. For this reason, it contents itself 
with negations directed against the hedonic and utilitarian, 
and thus opposes morality which springs from inclination 
and leads to the calculation of consequences. To act from 
inclination would put a pathological motive in place of a 
moral one, even though the act were one of benevolence, 
while to be guided by the idea of well-being would produce 
legality instead of morality, even in case of an act of justice 
(Meta. d. bitten, s. 255-257). The only consistent plan, 
which appears to him who believes that life consists of either 
desire or duty, involves the autonomous ideal, whereby one 
must base virtue upon virtue and follow right for right's 
sake. Before Kant, Samuel Clarke had involved himself in 
a similar paradox, escape from which was found in a mild 
form of eudaemonia wherein both rigorists abandon their 
perpendicular positions for a larger view of life which in- 
volves the postulates of Deity and immortality. Clarke was 
supreme in the dogmatism that declared moral relations 
to be as demonstrable as mathematical ones, and in the form 
of an identical proposition he made virtue equal virtue as 
certainly as twice two equals four. It is absurd to reason 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 217 

otherwise, and one can no more logically identify virtue 
with pleasure than he can make twice two equal five. Such 
is the abstract path which Clarke pursued until he came 
abreast of human life; then he summed up the situation 
with all the pathos of moral doubt coupled with ethical 
earnestness, expressed in the following words: "Thus far 
is clear 'Tis certain indeed that virtue and vice are eternally 
and necessarily different, and that one truly deserves to be 
chosen for its own sake and the other ought by all means 
to be avoided, though a man were sure for his own particular 
neither to gain nor to lose anything by the practice of 
either . . . but the case does not stand thus . . . 
The practice of virtue is accompanied with great temptations 
and allurements of pleasure and profit . . . And this 
alters the question and destroys the practice of that which 
appears so reasonable in the whole speculation, and intro- 
duces the necessity of rewards and punishments." (Natural 
Religion, 1, 7). 

The hopelessness of such autonomy need not cloud the 
mind with doubts concerning the possibility of ethical judg- 
ment in general, which involves a question vastly more 
momentous than the pedantic issues of intuitionism. Is 
ethical judgment possible? Such is the question that is to 
be debated in this part of our study, which indulges the 
intellectualistic side of morality to the greatest possible ex- 
treme. Only a certain moral one-sidedness in Kant could 
have made him so skeptical of the function of judgment in 
logic and so credulous of its value in ethics, for in the 
Kritik der reinen Vernunft he does all in his power to 
obstruct the path of judgment, while in the Kritik der 
praktischen Vernunft he betrays a strange weakness for 
autonomous ethical propositions; just as in the metaphysical 
work he seeks by all means to cast out the premises of soul, 
world, and world-soul, while in the moralistic one he 
suffers no sense of logical contradiction to forbid his rein- 
statement of the postulates of God, freedom, and immorality. 
In the first Kritik, Kant's ideal of judgment is the synthetic 
one, according to the great interrogative, "Wie sind 
synthetische Urtheile a priori moglich" (S. 19). In the 
second Kritik he falls back upon the analytical proposition 



218 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and asserts, virtue is virtue. In such a confusion of methods, 
what was needed was a recognition that all judgment is 
inherently difficult, so that both logic and ethics must first 
justify the general connection of concepts before any par- 
ticular forms may be discussed. 

3 THE PROBLEM OF ETHICAL JUDGMENT 

In the beginning, with Socrates, the principle of definition 
was an ethico-logical one, fit for a discussion of both the 
good and true ; hence we should expect the moralist to interest 
himself in the possibilities of concept and judgment. The 
elaboration of the concept, which is a process involving 
abstraction and generalization, brings about a fusion of 
an idea and its marks, as man with bi-pedality, gold with 
yellowness, and animal with locomotion. But further ex- 
amination reveals a certain looseness of connection between 
the concept and its marks which can hardly exist with a thing 
and its qualities. Hence arises the question, How does a 
concept inhere in its marks? In firm analytic fashion, or in 
a more fluid synthetic form? The Socratic Megarians, like 
Euclid and Stilpo, opposed any separation of thing into 
qualities, or of concept into marks, and our modern meta- 
physics with Spinoza and Kant, reveals a hesitancy to relate 
a substance to its attributes or a thing-in-itself to sensible 
phenomena. Moreover, there is something in the very nature 
of logical law to prevent any form of judgment which seeks 
to pass beyond the principle of identity. 

This fundamental logical principle helps the concept to 
connect thing with quality, or substance with attribute, but 
hinders any attempt to separate them into a judgment of 
relation. Monism is the enemy of all judgment. If man is 
man, how can he be bi-pedality; if gold is gold, how can 
it be yellow; if animal is animal, how can we call it 
locomotion? Is the subject the predicate, does it possess 
the predicate, or in some manner inhere in it? The prin- 
cipium identiatis, which in logic identifies a thing with itself 
and in ethics makes virtue equal virtue, seems to prescribe 
any judgment of relation between subject and predicate, so 
that identity in thought and autonomy in life seem to follow 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 219 

as necessary consequences. The way to synthesis, which 
Kant affected to find in his intuitions of time and space, as 
in the categories of substance and casuality, was such as to 
limit itself to the world of appearance only, where the law 
of identity s itself devoted to reality, no longer threatened. 
He who would effect genuine judgments will find, however, 
that this law which aids the concept is of value also in per- 
fecting the judgment, for it allows a limited form of 
synthesis which yields definite knowledge. We do not 
care to assert that gold has yellowness in general, for the 
peculiar luster of the metal is not like the tint of the flower, 
just as the sweetness of the apple is not like that of the 
orange, or the virtue of man like that of the angel. There 
must be some sort of qualification if the quality is to be de- 
scribed, (cf. hotze, Grundzuge d. Logik, § 30). 

The second law of thought now appears to continue the 
work of identifying concepts, and where we cannot immedi- 
ately connect two different ideas, we still find it possible to 
set up some relation between them. The law in question 
relates to causality as the first one related to substance; it is 
the principium rationis sujjicientis. According to such a 
principle of sufficient reason, we may take a series of pro- 
positions concerning gold and assert them in accordance with 
these two principles of identity and relation. Gold is yellow 
in the light, fusible in the fire, soluble in aqua regia, valuable 
in the market. Thus we justify the copula and satisfy the 
law of identity by adding a sufficient reason for our judgment 
concerning a certain idea. In the same spirit we now limit 
the predicate in such a way as to conform to the subject. 
Our own language does not indulge us in these forms of 
taste and discrimination, but in another mode of speech we 
may find the desired limitation of the predicate. Thus where 
we say, Man is beautiful, woman is beautiful, the French 
language limits the predicate according to the peculiar attri- 
butes of the sexes, and in a keener sense of perception affirms, 
I'homme, il est beau; la femme, elle est belle, so that the 
demands of logic and aesthetics are met at once. From the 
ethical point of view, where we would not have the autono- 
mous principle of identity deny our right to make certain 
useful assertions concerning virtue, we are permitted to de- 



220 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

clare, Virtue is beautiful in humanity, serviceable in nature, 
valuable in society, and praiseworthy in religion, wherein we 
have a series of synthetic judgments more advantageous 
to our science than the monotonous, Virtue is virtue, which 
may seem sublime in the abysmal character of its unpersonal 
utterances, but does not serve the living interests of humanity. 

4 — REAL RECTITUDE AND HUMAN INTEREST 

The foregoing discussion of moral rectitude has tended 
to show how ethical judgments are valid even when they 
do not confine themselves to purely identical propositions; 
hence the loss of autonomy in particular is not the loss of 
the judging function in general. In place of a valueless 
autonomy, we may substitute certain synthetic forms of 
judgment which indicate the sense of worth that the mind 
attaches to forms of conduct apart from any immediate ad- 
vantage which may accrue therefrom. Where logical judg- 
ments are so formed that they have a necessity and univer- 
sality independent of experience, ethical propositions are 
made prior to pleasure, and the revised form of the doctrine 
of right involves only the possibility of disinterestedness in 
attitude and action. If man is not supposed to be autono- 
mous, he is called upon to be human, and if he need not 
inhibit all sense of inclination in the pursuit of virtue he is 
expected to be distinterested. Is man capable of detached 
conduct or must he ever calculate consequence and live in 
the lower level of experience and pleasure? This is the 
supreme question and unless it receive satisfactory answer, it 
is vain to premise any ethical value to our human striving. 

If the hedonic argument were more compact, and the 
pursuit of pleasure were destined to yield permanent advan- 
tage, or if the eudaemonistic ideal of limited activity were 
likely to content man, there would be less hope of establishing 
the ideal of disingenuousness which contains the hope of 
humanity. Characteristic morality, in its advance beyond the 
empirical wiles of nature, may be invested with a content 
which still distinguishes the judgment from the empty 
rationalism of autonomy, and where the ideal keeps free 
from the taint of immediacy, it may assert the humanity of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 221 

man as the ground of all ethical, as well as other forms of 
judgment. Thus Kant, felt secure in his illicit eudaemonism 
because he relegated the ethical well-being of man to the 
trans-phenomenal world, while Clarke still hoped to continue 
his rationalistic argument in his abrupt transition from the 
here to the hereafter. In the midst of this there is oppor- 
tunity for real contention, and we may pause before sincerely 
asking ourselves whether man, whose life assumes a pheno- 
menal and individual form, is capable of making universal 
and necessary humanity his aim, which alone can invest his 
being with dignity. To pursue such an inquiry, one must 
lay less stress upon the severer forms of logical law and pay 
more heed to the yielding judgments of the aesthetic con- 
sciousness, where may be found permanent pleasure and 
universal perception. 

If man were meant to live according to nature, he would 
have no understanding; if his life were to be guided by 
reason, he would have no organs of sense. But man has 
both sense and understanding, and his life consists in ad- 
justing their respective claims in both action and reflection. 
The human mind is not so given up to sense that it cannot 
entertain ideas, or so lacking in originality that it is unable 
to connect these in forms of judgment. Speculation thus 
becomes possible, and, while man seems to be hemmed in by 
time and space and inclosed in his individuality, he evinces 
the ability to view the world in its totality. This is by virtue 
of the implicit humanity of the ego which makes possible the 
perception of outer universality, because it is possessed of a 
corresponding inner unity. Humanity thus becomes an 
object of consciousness and it is only as the individual 
abandons the petty egoism of opinion and rises to the univer- 
sality of judgment that knowledge becomes possible. Such 
intellectual disinterestedness reveals itself in science, in art, 
in philosophy, and since man has produced these speculative 
forms of his humanity we need not question his ability to 
consider humanity as such. It is the survival of sense that 
leads ethics to wonder whether man can rise above hedonism, 
but the triumph of reason in the judgments of physical, 
aesthetical and dialectical science is likewise the triumph of 
humanity over egoistic interests. 



222 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

The human combination of sense and spirit which seems 
to threaten pure cognition, reappears in a practical fashion 
in the kingdom of motivation, whence one is led to inquire 
whether man can make humanity an object of action as well 
as of thought. Human culture leaves no doubt that this 
high endeavor has ever characterized man, and just as he 
has long since surrendered to the ideal in contemplation, 
so he has repeated the performance in the field of conquest. 
One need only glance at art to behold the free contribution 
which man has made to humanity, for without natural or 
social constraint he has perfected the most excellent things 
his mind could conceive. The fine arts are so many evi- 
dences of human consecration to an ideal, and as long as 
interest in such unrealities abide, nothing may be feared 
for the security of a detached humanity. Religion likewise 
involves this same inclination for humanity and, apart from 
the assumption that man can will that which does not profit 
him, the acts of religionists can never be analyzed. 

The Vedic anxiety to discover the Self, where alone one 
may abide in security, and the Christian culture of the Soul 
are sufficient evidence of the disinterested behaviour of man. 
One need not long to demonstrate the validity of autonomous 
judgments which can only say, Virtue is virtue, for in the 
aesthetic-religious consciousness he has living examples of 
judgments which declare, Life is spiritual and humanity is 
of value. The genuine aim of the characteristic moralist 
should be, not to demonstrate man's power to follow the 
abstract in thought or action, but his ability and willingness 
to consider the universal interest of humanity. 

5 HUMANITY AS THE IDEAL 

In addition to placing the detached interest of humanity 
in the stead of the autonomous judgments of rationalistic 
ethics, our system calls upon us to recognize the positive 
elements which appear in the synthetic judgments of custom. 
These objectifications of the ever-striving human spirit are 
not so imperfect but that they can at least suggest the ideals 
of humanity. One should not be too cavalier-like with 
natural phenomena, which are the subject-matter of science 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 223 

and art; nor should he uphold a characteristic ethical 
system which tends to f flout the testimony given by cardinal 
virtues and spiritual ideals. Neglect of humanity has 
caused modern morality to deliver the virtues over to either 
a relativistic philosophy, like Hobbes' and Mandeville's 
which completely eviscerated them, or to a rationalistic one 
wherein they were immediately petrified in the form of 
"intuitions." Virtues are not hedonic utilities or intuitive 
norms but human values. Courage and justice, benevolence 
and wisdom do not arise because of any mere demand on 
the part of society, or because of their disciplinary value 
of character, but they appear according to the constraint 
of humanity which seeks to express its sense of worth and 
dignity. 

This second and, as we believe, superior view of human 
rectitude has not lacked recognition in modern ethics, while 
antiquity thought of inculcating no other ideal. Even 
Kant, the arch autonomist, seems to have been possessed of 
an inkling of this truth, for he kept referring to humanity 
and its moral dignity, and this very notion may have been 
strengthened by his knowledge of Hutcheson's "Inquiry 
Concerning Moral Good and Evil". Hutcheson's reply to 
Mandeville, with whom also Kant was familiar, involved 
a superior conception of moral sense, just as it carried out a 
fine argument for disinterested morality; all it required to 
reduce it to a system was the principle of value and a 
metaphysics of humanity. The aim of Hutcheson was to 
defend an original sense of virtue antecedent to all interest, 
and his arguments led him to a position expressive of the 
most consistent form of intuitionism. He contended for 
neither abstract rectitude nor concrete feeling, but allied 
himself with a view of virtue as something independent of 
private interest, but at one with the well-being of humanity. 
This is finely expressed by saying "Whence this secret chain 
between each person and mankind? How is my interest 
connected with the most distant parts of it? And yet I 
must admire actions which are beneficial to them, and love 
the author whence this love, compassion, indignation, and 
hatred toward even feigned characters, in the most distant 
ages and nations according as they appear kind, faithful, 



224 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and compassionate or of opposite dispositions, toward their 
imaginary contemporaries? If there is no moral sense, 
which makes rational actions appear beautiful, or deformed ; 
if all approbation be from the interest of the approver, 
'What's Hecuba to us, or we to Hecuba' ?" 

Hutcheson's theory depends upon a "sense of moral good in 
humanity" which pleases us without any sense of advantage 
(Inquiry, Sect. i). This attitude, anticipating the aesthetic 
ideals of Kant, is assumed as something in keeping with the 
usual practices of mankind, and represents an appreciation of 
humanity with no superior among the English moralists of 
the 1 8th century. Hutcheson's argument becomes all the 
more plausible when, instead of seeking to divest the moral 
sense of all feeling of pleasure, he turns that feeling into 
something universal and intellectual and accounts for private 
gratification as "concomitant pleasure" (Inquiry, Sect. II. 
vm ). This seems to be the most defensible view of 
intuitionism and rectitude that the school has to offer; 
its basis is found in humanity rather than in reason. Man 
is represented neither as having nor as wanting private 
interest, and the conflict between egoism and altruism, 
autonomy and heteronomy is lost sight of in the general 
contention that humanity has its own inner life and makes 
itself an end both real and worthy. No longer need we 
wonder whether man can lend himself to altruism or 
autonomy, for now we are involved in the larger question 
whether humanity has sufficient power to accomplish its 
vocations or enough value to content the strivings of man's 
spirit. 

If man is not destined to enjoy the happiness of his 
humanity, but must strive with himself as well as with 
nature, he is permitted to know that in the consciousness 
of his own spiritual nature is the ideal of rectitude to be 
found. He is not advised by his conscience to surrender 
to any impersonal law of autonomy, calculated to destroy 
all love of life, knowledge and beauty, but the humanity 
that lends its essence to the moral sense reappears and con- 
strains man to select an aim which, while allied with his 
own nature, shall not be phenomenal and individual, but 
real and universal. Here appears in the particular form of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 225 

motive that general principle of humanity which, as an 
impulse in the individual, tendency in the race, and order 
in the world, served as the premises of this view of man's 
morality. And whatever the most convincing categories of 
ethics may turn out to be, the supreme reality of the moral 
life consists in an ever-living humanity whose realization 
is the only justifiable and likely aim of ethical striving. 
Our examination of characteristic morality has shown how 
necessary it is to keep within the shadow of such an idea. 
Conscience makes its appeal to us because it speaks the inti- 
mate language of our own being, while rectitude appeals 
to our minds by reason of its connection with the totality 
of our human nature. 

Having observed how conscience and rectitude assume 
their proportions in the one all-inclusive humanity, we are 
ready to make the transition to the second form of char- 
acteristic ethics based upon the will rather than the intellect, 
and changing the view from norms to be recognized to 
duties to be fulfiled. Here the usual treatment of the 
ethical problem betrays a peculiar lapse of logic not com- 
monly noticed. By what intellectual right do we effect 
the transition from rectitude to obligation, or from accepting 
a point of view to performing a task? Kant asserts the 
autonomy of rectitude and the categorical nature of duty 
without showing how one leads to the other. Before him, 
Price had raised this very question and had sought to pass 
from the certainty of judgments of rectitude to the obliga- 
tion of moral duties. "From the account given of obliga- 
tion, it follows that rectitude is a law as well as a rule to 
us; that it not only directs but binds all as far as it is 
perceived." (Review, Chap, vi.) 

But this only states the difficulty without solving it, 
and the philosophic interests of unity demand that we find 
the same function operative in both the judgment of rectitude 
and the law of obligation. This function must be capable 
of assuming an active as well as a passive form, while it 
must be broad enough to include both forms of characteristic 
ethics. For such a purpose there seems to be only one 
principle: namely, humanity. In it are found conscience 
and rectitude in their intellectual forms, as well as freedom 



226 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and duty in their volitional capacity. And not only upon 
the metaphysical side, but in connection with moral interest 
may we note this; for it is humanity which puts forth the 
ideal of rectitude and the motive of duty not for the sake 
of these principles, but for the sake of indwelling human 
consciousness which uses these as modes of expression and 
forms of realization. The continuity of human striving, 
having identified the man of sense with the man of reason, 
now reappears to reconcile the contrary forms of morality 
as rectitude and morality as duty. It is the same human 
creature who is first passive in his judgments and then 
active in his motives. 



IV 
HUMAN STRIVING AS FREEDOM 

I THE PLACE OF FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 

Like many another problem in the ethical striving of 
humanity, — the paradox of pleasure, the conflict between 
immediate and remote well-being, remorse and non-resent- 
ment, autonomous and disinterested virtue — the question 
concerning human freedom involves again the idea of 
man's ambiguous position in the universe. The inherent 
conflict between naturistic and humanistic forces thus re- 
appears upon a new field to create a new and particular 
form of an old and general problem. Hence the com- 
petitive claims of freedom and determinism need cause 
no surprise in connection with a method of thought which 
seeks everywhere to account for individual ethical problems 
upon the basis of a universal striving of humanity toward 
realization. With nature as his origin and her forms of 
life still adhering to him, could man be expected to conduct 
himself according to sheer liberty? With a human destiny, 
which has led him out of nature into spiritual life in its 
characteristic forms of consciousness and conduct, can this 
same human subject be accounted for according to causa- 
tion? Man's very humanity is proof of his freedom, his 
history is the unfolding of his freedom, the goal of all 
his striving is no point in nature, but an object set by the 
reasonable will itself. In this way, freedom finds a secure 
position in the striving life of man, and it is only when 
we set out with a fixed and finished conception of humanity 
that liberty causes philosophic difficulty. 

The principle of freedom prepares the way for duty as 
conscience expanded into rectitude, all four principles pro- 
ceeding from the one humanity with its inner life and out- 
ward striving. Thus related to the whole moral life of 

227 



228 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

man, freedom appears as no extra premise or postulate 
brought in from without to further the moral conquest 
carried on by humanity, but assumes the form of something 
implicit in the full striving of man. If there can be found 
no substitute for the traditional idea of free-will, it will 
be necessary to invest the old principle with a new content, 
as also to adopt some new line of approach to it. The 
elder view provoked a dualism, inasmuch as it set liberty and 
law at variance with each other; the new and humanistic 
method asserts a monistic tendency and seeks to reconcile 
the unhappy contrast between freedom and fate. Genuine 
human liberty does not consist in any supposed ability to 
defeat nature in its law of casuality, but involves the power 
to depart from nature in the interests of a higher human 
life. Hence if freedom arouses in nature the apprehension 
that casuality sometimes provokes in ethical consciousness, 
the great World-Spirit could not complain that liberty in 
man was an attempt to destroy her laws, but could only feel 
chagrin that her highest creature should leave her to vow 
allegiance to a superior order of being. For man has shown 
this very tendency to abandon the immediate order for the 
sake of carrying on a form of life in another realm, and the 
question of freedom is not one of mere possibility, but of 
reality, inasmuch as man has been carrying on the work of 
liberty for an indefinite length of time. Human freedom 
is not a special problem encountered only on the steep road 
of dialectics, but is the usual situation in the world of 
humanity. There is nothing extraordinary about the prob- 
lem, that should distinguish it from the question of con- 
science or rectitude; but it is something to be expected in 
connection with that striving toward selfhood which gives 
man's life its meaning. 

2 THE PUNCTUAL VIEW OF FREEDOM 

The traditional view of freedom has put the problem 
of liberty and determinism in the position of a sharp either 
— or; to have both seems impossible. The ambiguous posi- 
tion of man in the universe, however, does not suffer fate 
and freedom to rest upon the same metaphysical level, but 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 229 

adjusts them vertically as successive stages of the one 
active principle of the world. Physical force can hardly be 
regarded as friendly to the human will, but why should we 
interpret the unconscious activity of nature as though it 
were inimical to our liberty? It is nearer the truth to 
survey nature as though she were quite indifferent to the 
purposes of humanity, and it is a false romanticism which 
imagines that nature frowns or smiles upon our freedom. 
The metaphysical place of causality is beneath that of free- 
dom as all nature is inferior to humanity, and the picture 
of the deterministic problem which presents a conflict upon a 
level field is far removed from the exigencies of the case 
which demand that we shall recognize the subordination of 
the lower to the higher as the free fate of humanity. Mere 
naturistic ethics, which looks to immediate pleasure as the 
end of life, and sheer characteristic morality which knows 
only the restraint of conscience, produce this false horizon- 
talism in the question of freedom, and a system which finds 
man striving to ascend from nature can only survey this 
question vertically, where the lower lends to the higher 
and the world of sense prepares the way for the world of 
spirit. Man in his freedom is not expected to fight against 
man in his fate, but his problem consists in adapting the 
forms and forces of nature to the sovereign end of his life. 

Such a conception of the problem, where an ever-striving 
humanity ascends above the confines of nature, renders un- 
necessary the conventional arguments for and against the 
equilibrium of motives. It is usual to insist upon freedom 
as something evidenced by immediate consciousness before 
the act and a sense of compunction after it, provided it has 
been of an unethical character. Before acting, the subject 
feels free to choose for good and bad; after acting, his sense 
of approval or disapproval advises him that he could have 
done otherwise ; hence the moral victory or defeat. In oppo- 
sition to this, determinism maintains a principle of physical 
causality, which can brook no interference, as well as an 
historical principle of custom whereby events "shape them- 
selves" and things become what they are. With this heavy 
armor, determinism seeks to defend itself against its liber- 
tarian adversary, who is so far removed from his antagonist 



230 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

that the light darts of inner consciousness never reach their 
mark. No such conflict takes place, except upon the pages 
of libertarian and deterministic literature, for the free human 
being has no more desire to dethrone causality than a crea- 
ture possessed of locomotion has to uproot the earth beneath 
it. While humanity assumes a fluid form indicative of 
inner freedom, it is not to be wondered at that the forms 
of nature and the facts of history should appear as if 
crystallized. But the total universe is vast enough and suffi- 
ciently rich in content to include, not only fluidity and 
solidity, but also freedom and fate. 

The punctual view of freedom is insufficient to account 
for human activity or to satisfy its ethical needs; hence it 
becomes necessary to extend it in such a way as to identify 
it with the recognized principle of human emancipation 
from nature. In such a way a systematic view of liberty 
appears and a genuine human being takes the place of the 
"free moral agent." The older view of freedom presents an 
unequal conflict between the punctual liberty of the isolated 
individual and a whole world of physical force; while now 
we are led to see that the contrast is between the lower order 
of nature with its law and the higher one of humanity with 
its liberty. Kant, who was so strangely concerned for a 
fixed freedom which should surrender man to the categorical 
imperative, still saw how reason could reconcile phenomenal 
causality with intelligible freedom, a view which Schopen- 
hauer all but reduced to a consistent form of voluntaristic 
monism. Indeed, Schopenhauer's system so related the will 
to the world that he was able to declare that the will is not 
only free but almighty — "der Wille ist nicht nur frei, son- 
de™ soaar alhnachtig (Welt ah Wille u. V orstellung , § 53). 
Now, this systematic liberty of humanity as an inner world- 
whole must be substituted for the solitary freedom of the 
individual. 

Medieval freedom with its indifference to nature must 
be abandoned, and along with it departs the whole casuistical 
scheme of argument for and against punctual liberty. Man's 
whole inner life, and not merely his alleged freedom is 
called in question, and ethical philosophy must assume a new 
task and develop new methods. The career of ethical 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 231 

thought in Europe witnessed a change from the naive will- 
less morals of antiquity and the sharp punctual freedom 
of Augustine. It is surprising to us moderns how antiquity 
succeeded in acquiring its ideals without the use of any 
special principle of freedom, but that is because we assume 
no full and systematic view of human activity. Two forms 
of freedom now confront each other: (1) A formal 
freedom which works broadly in the interests of the su- 
perior man: (2) A dynamic freedom reducing the whole 
ambiguous position of man in the universe to an immediate 
choice. The first one made possible a complete freedom for 
man, not only in his moral activity, but also in art and 
science; the second was concerned for ethics alone and 
sought to prove only enough liberty to enable man to perform 
his duty. When, therefore, the moral life is so recon- 
structed that it includes the total perfection of man in his 
spiritual superiority, the need of an incisive liberty of in- 
stantaneous choice seems to pass away. 

Man possesses freedom in cognition as well as in cona- 
tion and a glance at the usual conduct of the mind may 
serve to enlighten the idea of liberty. Sensation, upon which 
we depend for our source of knowledge, does not so limit 
man that he has no higher form of mental life, for the mind 
transforms this into a free idea. Such freedom is no ar- 
bitrary product of consciousness, but a mental image in- 
harmony with nature and yet satisfactory to the mind. It 
suggests to us that man in his freedom is not supposed to 
destroy causality for the time being, but to use its materials 
and transform them into a characteristic human product, 
whereby law is turned into liberty just as sensation yields 
to ideation. As a human vehicle the intellect, therefore, 
seems capable of carrying the responsibility of our spiritual 
life in a way by no means inferior to the powers of the 
will. In the mastery of active cognition antique philosophy 
realizes a principle of freedom not unlike the modern free- 
dom of the will. The creative intellect never suffers man to 
submit to the mere registering of impressions and the reaction 
upon incitements, but leads him to conceive of ideal elements 
and to desire ideal stimuli. If we assume the complete sway 
of the category of causality, whose validity was so questioned 



232 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

by Kant and Hume, and thus survey man as determined to 
follow the strongest or most obvious motive, how we may ac- 
count the progress of his humanity ? Where man is conceived 
of in a physical sense, the mere fact that he possesses auto- 
matic functions is sufficient to indicate a certain degree of de- 
terminism. Man must breathe, his heart must beat, veins and 
arteries must act in accordance with the set plan of nature. 
But man as a valuing organism is not content with mere 
metabolism, for he sees in his life benefits in which he would 
participate, as also elements which he would turn into 
genuine human products. His freedom shows itself in his 
native ability to humanize the immediate data of the 
natural order. 

3 — EVIDENCES OF CREATIVE FREEDOM 

Among man's earliest attempts to establish his human 
freedom appears his art which is closely connected with the 
course of nature, inasmuch as it ever assumes a perceptible 
form. Nevertheless, the free moment of aesthetics does not 
fail to appear in the creative deed of the artist, as also in 
the detached form of delight which man experiences when 
he surveys the unrealities of the fine arts. Under the 
auspices of determinism, stone, plant and animal would 
find sufficient opportunity for realization; but natural law 
does not provide for civilization and culture, which arise 
only as free human reason organizes the forms of outer 
and inner life. What humanity needs is something more 
than causality and something less than, or different from, 
the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae; it is a spiritual freedom 
which makes possible the creative work of man as shown in 
living art. The solid forms of the artistic, like architecture 
and sculpture, show how man can recast the mechanical and 
organic principles of nature into structures and forms whose 
significance appeals to man alone. More idealistic products 
of beauty appear in painting and poetry whose connection 
with the real world is established through the slender means 
of a single sense like vision or hearing. Man's ability to 
abandon the solidity of matter and repose in these repre- 
sentative forms of what exists in nature and what happens 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 233 

in history, is additional proof of his spiritual superiority to 
the world which caused him — proof of his human freedom. 
In the same manner, tHe fugitive forms of music which, as 
an art, possess the single dimension of time fortifies our 
belief that in the world of percepts man's artistic genius 
reveals the inner freedom of his humanity. 

To this same end, science adds evidence concerning the 
freedom of man in idea, and the very philosophy of nature, 
which seeks to subsume all events under the form of 
causality, testifies to the triumph of the human understand- 
ing over the material order under its sway. Only an 
emancipated mind could attribute law to physical pheno- 
mena, and the development of the world of knowledge and 
of the world of nature betrays the advance of humanity 
from sensation to ideation. Such freedom in idea is in no 
sense a combat between a physical force here and a psychical 
one there, for mind answers no challenge from inferior 
matter. The whole question concerns itself with man's 
ability to formulate ideas in such a way as to construct an 
independent order of knowledge, and the traditional conflict 
between forces and motives does not contain the merits of 
the case. Man is not wholly free, but his history reveals a 
progress toward freedom, and sufficient has been accom- 
plished in ancient aesthetics and modern science to lead one 
to believe that man will triumph over nature, whose sway 
ends with the animalistic and immediate in the human 
species, leaving creative reason to enjoy its own liberty. 

The intellectual evidence of freedom in art and science, 
as these have grown up in ancient and modern life, is 
furthered by a similar sense of superiority in ethics and reli- 
gion in the forms of pagan virtue and Christian faith. 
Man's ethical life, like his science, contains only a sugges- 
tion of the physical order, for we may act for the sake 
of discipline and think for the sake of mere culture. Our 
discussion of characteristic ethics as rectitude has shown 
that, where the absurdities of autonomy are forgotten, man 
may pursue the path of a disinterested human endeavor and 
thus disengage his being from the rest of the natural order, 
and plant him in his humanity. This is nothing else than 
the classic idea of virtue and the Christian conception of 



234 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

right, whose undisputed place in human history show how 
a natural creature may yet set up ideal aims and live as 
in the light. So artistic is man that he cannot be contented 
with the satisfaction of immediate well-being; his imagina- 
tion demands recognition, and in the midst of primitive 
customs the idealized hero does not suffer from want of 
recognition. Achievement in human affairs, even if it be 
in such trivial matters as athletic supremacy, or excellence 
in intellectual attainment, as with playwright and actor, 
indicates the readiness with which humanity abandons prac- 
tical considerations and indulges itself in splendid un- 
realities. Virtues may thus become forms of play, and 
health of body with Spartans flowers in cardinal courage, as 
health of mind among Athenians puts forth wisdom. The 
ancient with the limited range of classic virtue achieved 
freedom with an ease unknown in Christendom, where a 
certain passion for piety led man to repudiate the physical 
order so that free character might flourish. This virtue 
reveals the power of freedom. 

The practical testimony as to the ideal freedom, humanity 
reaches its climax in religion. As science and conduct sustain 
some connection with the world, inasmuch as it is useful to 
think and to act in accordance with nature, so art and 
religion are more cavalier-like in their treatment of natural 
forms which they transform in the intensity of their idealiza- 
tion. Like ethics, religion is possessed of an earnest spirit 
which suffers not its human subject to repose in the world 
of time and space, but inspires him to secure something 
permanent in the form of an absolute spiritual life. That 
man is religious who in the integrity of his inner nature 
adjusts himself to the unity of the world. No such attitude 
on the part of man, no such act of his will could be con- 
ceived were man not possessed of ideal freedom. Like art, 
religion accomplishes its results in connection with objects of 
sense; for while beauty and worship are more refined than 
knowledge and virtue, they are so constructed that they can 
participate in the innocent forms of sense. The quality of 
freedom involved in human worship is thus richer than 
the emancipation of the spirit in science and ethics where a 
discreet form of freedom prevails. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 235 

As these familiar forms of human culture thus testify, 
man is capable of ideal activity in affairs of speculation and 
practice. This is his proper freedom in humanity, which 
is in no wise comparable with the disputable freedom of 
nature. The quality of the morale involved determines the 
quantity of freedom which a system requires, and where one 
feels called upon to be autonomous he must be supplied with 
unlimited freedom whose reality is scarcely provable. Give 
man some other than a rationalistic problem, and set before 
him no abstract goal, but perfect humanity, and no arbitrary 
liberty is made necessary; or, pause to inquire concerning 
man's genuine task in life and the ideal freedom which 
naturally arises in the progress of humanity suffices man. 
Human striving contains an implicit liberty and just as Kant 
made freedom depend upon the moral calling to duty, in 
which obligation implied ability and the "ought" the "can", 
so it is possible to subsume the freedom of the will under 
the striving of humanity. The World of Humanity, whose 
forms of science and art, ethics and worship, reveal the in- 
dependence of man's spiritual nature is only the larger ex- 
pression of this formal freedom which, in culture, appears as 
architectonic. 

4 THE UNITY OF FREEDOM AND FATE 

Proof of human freedom is not to be sought in the 
world of nature, but in the world of humanity, wherein 
man is permitted to act as man. If in this realm man 
shows no ability to create, then one may retreat to the 
category of causality and seek such satisfaction as deter- 
minism may offer. But the history of man is the history 
of freedom in the conception of ideal motives as well as 
in the creation of ideal interests. Neither hedonism nor 
intuitionism can account for the spontaneity of man's con- 
sciousness, much less can they with their ideals of desire 
and duty content the striving of a creature who feels capable 
of selfhood and worldhood. Both views overlook the fact 
that man is creative, and that instead of contending with 
nature for the sake of some supposed aequilibrium arbitrii, 
man aspires to develop an independent order of being in 



236 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

which his humanity may thrive. Where ethics has not 
discovered the peculiar realm of spiritual life to which its 
ideals belong, it has exhausted its moral earnestness in op- 
posing one of the most valuable ideas of the human under- 
standing, — that of causality. Freedom, however, cannot 
come in as causality departs, and he who would adjust 
himself to human experience must have sufficient insight to 
survey freedom and law at once. Punctual freedom is 
wanting in both validity and value. Genuine freedom is 
no such function as that which hedonism and rigorism deny 
and affirm so ineffectually; it consists of the entire superior- 
ity of culture over nature and invests the major morality 
with its intrinsic character. 

Conventional theories have not touched freedom at all; 
determinism and libertarianism have unearthed a struggle 
which may go on in the animal mind and in man's too, 
where his life is one of animalism, but genuine freedom, as 
felt by the superior man, is an idea removed from these 
moral disputants. The question is not whether Sophocles 
was free in his eating and drinking, but whether, as is 
manifestly the case, he possessed sufficient superiority to 
produce an immortal drama. It is not whether heredity 
was active in Shakespeare's case, but whether he possessed 
artistic genius. The genius, who has realized himself as a 
human being, demonstrates the possibility of this higher 
freedom in his peculiar mingling of liberty and constraint. 
As individual, who may arbitrarily choose in favor of 
classicism, romanticism, or realism, he combines this free 
choice with a certain general genius which makes him a 
painter in spite of himself, so that his work is the unique 
product of conscious selection among methods and uncon- 
scious constraint as to art itself. In all worthy work, man's 
individuality naturally associates itself with natural law to 
effect something beyond nature in either her individual or 
general forms. This is a freedom which links itself to man's 
moral calling and makes possible the achievement of his 
ethical vocation. 

Nature abhors freedom, but she is no more friendly to 
culture; she disowns the "free moral agent", but the life 
of the human spirit is equally alien to her. Ethics need only 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 237 

decide which view of liberty is the more desirable, the 
formal freedom of human striving or the dynamic freedom 
of the punctual will. *The latter places man in an eccentric 
position and marvels when he displays any human poise or 
puts forth any initiative. But this dynamic view of arbitrary 
will has never met the question of life in its totality. When 
the centrifugal force of human striving is made the measure 
of human action, it will appear that man and his moral 
life have no need of the dynamic form of freedom which 
just acts without reason or purpose. Striving is the proper 
substitute for liberty, and the arguments for and against a 
volitional equilibrium are ineffectual where the total issue of 
life is the question which is raised. In the escape from 
freedom lies the emancipation of humanistic ethics, and 
genuine humanity which seeks to preserve its self-respect 
owes no more allegiance to a duty which drives than to a 
desire which leads. Man is neither free nor fated, but he 
has over him a human vocation which inspires him to com- 
bine law and liberty with the result of achieving a full, free 
humanity. 

Such humanity is the living synthesis of fate and free- 
dom, for man in his capacity of both creature and character 
is responsible to both forms of constraint. Religion reveals 
this in its mysterious fusion of Divine regnancy^ and human 
responsibility. Yet when man by freedom realizes himself 
as a human being, he also satisfies the demands of a Being 
similarly inclined toward virtue. Humanity thus witnesses 
a cooperation of Infinite and finite wherein man freely 
participates in the larger order of righteousness in and 
around him. All humanity is the product of free fate, of 
individual and universal, of liberty and law; and when the 
position of man is appreciated and his problem properly 
stated, there will be no occasion to puzzle over a casuistical 
curiosity which now deserves to be forever forgotten. A 
full conception of humanity cannot be elaborated upon the 
basis of more liberty, but must involve something beyond 
man's personality and beneath the surface of his conscious- 
ness; hence the "free moral agent" must be surveyed as a 
character of free-fate whose influence ends not with his 
moral will but extends over to his intellect. 



238 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

The inner life of man has not failed to take notice of 
these ever interweaving processes, yet it is only as we depart 
from the idea of punctual liberty of the ego and adapt our 
ethics to the free striving of humanity that we are able to 
account for these strange syntheses. In the human mind the 
mingling of liberty with law assumes the form of inner 
and outer modes of being. Hereby man, situated so uniquely 
in the universe, is permitted to preserve his ethical self- 
respect amid the dull laws of the physical world and the 
vagaries of the individual; and he maintains his character 
as a self-propelled human being detached from the world 
and delivered from mere temperament. How blind has 
libertarianism been to the fact that freedom means emanci- 
pation from the immediacy of both physical and psychical 
orders, or from the phenomenal world of things and persons. 
Beyond these unorganized forms of the world lies the 
freedom of inner humanity. No longer will mechanical 
motives, called either law or liberty and situated external 
to the genuine nature of man, suffice to account for that 
synthesis of freedom and fate that the conscious and un- 
conscious life of humanity makes possible. Something more 
systematic is demanded and the free moral agency of the 
individual must give way before the genius of humanity 
within man. Thereby inner consciousness is united with 
outer constraint so that man may perform a genuine act of 
humanity. 



THE ETHICAL DEMANDS OF HUMANITY 

Humanity arises within man as the very essence of his 
being, but it is none the less elicited from without. Hence 
it comes about that man's humanity makes certain demands 
upon him, and these he interprets as obligations. Such is 
man's position in the world that he may make demands upon 
nature whence he expects happiness, or in reverse order may 
feel it his duty to render something to the world. Hence if 
we ask, "What shall we receive?" we are hedonistic; if we 
say, "What must we give?" our morals are characteristic. 
Duty is a debt to be paid, not to nature or society, but to 
the one world of humanity. To nature we owe nothing and 
she has not the capacity to receive our free-will offerings; 
but to humanity we owe everything since it is for humanity 
that we were destined. This condition of affairs, however, 
does not suffer man to indulge in any undue complacency, 
for such is the seriousness of life and the uncertainty of its 
outcome that something like moral toil is made necessary to 
him who acquits himself of his humanity. Man must take 
his place in the endless course of human striving, and how- 
ever glorious life may be, it does not leave us without a 
sense of responsibility. 

The rationalistic view of life is such as to cause man to 
doubt his abilities, and the yoke of a categorical imperative 
imposes a burden which is not easy or light ; hence we do not 
wonder that Kant fled to the shades of the eternal cypresses 
when he sought the fulfillment of his ideal. Sheer con- 
science, with its self-styled dictates, need not expect man to 
obey; mere morality with its arbitrary demands has no real 
claim upon man. Nevertheless, the destiny of man is such 
as to imply responsibility, and when we recall how our 
humanity calls upon us to strive that we may assert our 
spiritual character, we can understand how it is that man 

239 



240 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

should interpret this demand as a duty. There are two 
distinct ways in which this demand may be understood, just 
as there are two forms of human freedom. The demand 
which humanity makes upon us may assume the immediate 
form of individual duty, which is the counterpart of char- 
acteristic morality as rectitude ; or it may be viewed more 
inclusively as a sense of responsibility comparable to that 
sense of disinterestedness which revealed humanity's attitude 
toward the right. Duty indicates the attitude of man toward 
some law of reason; human responsibility relates man to the 
inner world of humanity with its august claims upon our 
activities. 

I THE DEMAND AS INDIVIDUAL DUTY 

Prominent among the questions which associate them- 
selves with duty arises the problem concerning the source of 
the impulse. It seems obvious that man should have desires, 
but it is not so clear why he responds to an imperceptible 
and remote interest called duty. The conception of man 
which has guided our discussion thus far has been a conative 
one and the ideal has been that of the man striving. Yet 
this ideal has not presented itself explicitly, but in connection 
with the minor functions of human nature. Thus the sense 
of striving, which everywhere invests humanity, assumed a 
direct form in desire, as also in the conquest of immediacy 
which is supposed to lead to happiness. Why should it not 
reappear in sterner semblance as an ideal of duty where 
direct contact with reason takes the place of the immediacy 
of nature in desire? Both of these ideals overlook the fact 
that man is not related to one hemisphere of life alone, and 
in defiance of the implicit unity of spiritual life in sense 
and reason, naturistic and characteristic ethics assume that 
man can live first without duties and then without desires. 
So complete is the plan of human striving and so resourceful 
the character of our humanity that there is no need to take 
refuge in either of these eccentrics of morality. 

The ethics of duty has made progress in the world, be- 
cause it has symbolized man's impulse to attain to pure 
humanity. In the sublime instance of Kant, the office of duty 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 241 

was magnified by the abrupt departure from both sense and 
reason indicated in the whole critical system; for the orig- 
inator of the categorical imperative had already relinquished 
his claim upon the speculative view of the world before he 
set himself at variance with the practical appreciation of 
life according to inclination. Only duty was left, and its 
ideal exactments were urged with a fury born of despair. 
We need not Kant to tell us that we cannot live without 
duty, but the full imperative of humanity informs us that 
we cannot live without desire. In the dual order of sense 
and reason, whose reconciliation has not yet appeared, it is 
expected that man should respond to the sense of fitness 
which firmly binds him to the inner world without releasing 
him from the claims of the outer one, so that desire is as 
imperative as duty. Kant recognizes some such general truth 
when he postulates a certain Inter esse which is possessed by 
the practical reason (Krit. d. prac. Vernunjt, SS. 260-262), 
just as at a later period he introduces a higher and disin- 
terested consideration of humanity in the form of an asthe- 
tical judgment which transcends the interests of both sense 
and reason, of pleasure and of virtue (Kirt. d. Urtheil- 
skraft.) 

Characteristic ethics which here assumes the form of 
duty, is recognized in connection with moral law. Whether 
this can be harmonized with the sense of freedom lying at 
the heart of this method of morality depends upon how the 
ideas of liberty and law are understood. As the argument 
stands in the records of intuitionism, there is a sharp con- 
tradiction in a theory of will which now is looked upon as 
free and then is bound by obligation to an ethical law; 
and the advocate of free-will has not seen that his argu- 
ment for liberty must be carried on in opposition to law in 
general, and not physical law in particular. In itself, law 
stands for universality in form and necessity in operation, 
whereby it combines the Law of Identity, which asserts, 
Whatever is, is, with the law of Sufficient Reason, asserting, 
Whatever happens has a cause. Metaphysics adapts these 
fundamental logical principia and constructs them in an 
ontological scheme, with substance as its center, as well as 
a cosmological one, having causality as its basis. Nature, 



242 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

with its forms of space and time, matter and motion, adapts 
itself to such a category of law, realizing it in static and 
dynamic forms. 

Where the moral world-order is surveyed from this 
standpoint, the interpretation of duty as law is by no means 
clear; for where the steadfast forms of nature lend them- 
selves to the logical laws of identity and sufficient reason, 
the strivings of the human will are so inclined to the 
individual and arbitrary that the imposition of law upon a 
free being seems hopeless at the start and fruitless at the 
outcome. While ethics may approximate to the general 
requisite of law and thus elaborate maxims which shall 
possess universality of form and necessity of content, it can 
never aspire to present any principles of will to compare 
with the intellectual principles known to logic. The at- 
tempt to accomplish this can scarcely advance beyond the 
barren rationalism of Cudworth and Clarke, or the formalism 
of Butler's view of conscience and Kant's categorical im- 
perative. Such a difficulty is due to the fact that the will, 
having a different nature from that of the intellect, is not 
expected to pursue the same methods of conduct, so that 
the ideal of a uniform and compelling principle, which must 
command the assent of the mind, is not directly applicable 
to such an inner principle as the will. Characteristic ethics 
stands in need of restatement, after which can follow the 
reconstruction necessary to relate duty to the imperative de- 
mands of humanity. 

Such reconstruction involves a clear recognition of the 
half-real nature of duty. Unlike the antique notion of the 
good, duty indicates no finished product which man should 
imitate as his ideal, but it consists of something which de- 
pends upon the will of man for its realization. Nevertheless, 
duty is not conceived of as wholly unreal, in which case it 
could not be construed as something universally binding, but 
possesses a metaphysical status wholly different from that of 
substance, cause, space or time. In a certain suggestive 
sense, the modern ideal of duty is in the same peculiar 
position between thought and thing as was the ancient notion 
of virtue when Socrates redeemed it from Sophistry and 
reduced it to general definition, without carrying it forward 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 243 

to the ontological place of Plato's realism. Duty has a 
conceptual form, so that it is neither real nor unreal. When 
such duty is appropriated by man it assumes certain repre- 
sentative forms adaptable to will and intellect. Accord- 
ingly, it is said, Duty is that which man ought to do, as it is 
further claimed, Duty is that which ought to be. The idea 
of "that which ought to be" involves a moral ontology 
whose demands are far beyond the powers of rationalistic 
comprehension; for it is no simple task to unite the intellec- 
tualism of Plato's ideal of the good with Kant's volun- 
taristic maxim of duty. In the history of modern ethics, 
the law of duty has been formal in the intellect and in- 
fluential with the will, but it has not assumed the sure 
position which the ideal of law suggests. 

2 — THE SELF-CONTRADICTION OF INDIVIDUAL WILL 

The problem of duty assumes a more hopeless form 
when the mysterious character of the will comes under our 
scrutiny. This problem may be introduced conveniently in 
connection with the simple function of judgment, without 
which we cannot indicate the principles of necessity and 
universality involved in the notion of law. With the in- 
tellect, the function of judgment plays a part so convincing 
that no dispute can arise, except as to particular forms like 
the analytical and synthetical. In discussing the nature 
of rectitude, we took the opportunity to indicate how logical 
law guides us in elaborating the connection between subject 
and predicate. The function appears with the process of 
feeling, whereby we develop judgments of taste which repre- 
sent the beauty of certain forms of nature or creations of 
art. Fluid as is its form and subjective as is its character, 
human feeling possesses sufficient stability to assume a 
propositional form, and just as we say, "The rose is red", 
so we may add, "The rose is beautiful." With the will, 
the case does not stand thus, for there are no judgments of 
will, nor can there be any. Both intellect and affection 
trace back to conscious processes with definable qualities, 
like the sensation of color or the feeling of pleasure, and 
for this reason ideas may be related to appropriate char- 



244 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

acteristics in the conventional form of judgment. The 
will, however, presents no such dualism of thing and quality, 
and hence does not permit us to relate two forms of one 
and the same mental product, and the very expression, 
"Judgment of will," indicates nothing which the mind can 
conceive. 

As a product of consciousness, the will requires special 
treatment and a review of this may serve to reveal the 
source of our present difficulty with regard to duty and 
its problematic form. The introspective method of psy- 
chology seems incapable of objectifying any quality of cona- 
tion, however directly it may reveal the attributes of cogni- 
tion and affection. So intimately is the will related to our 
inner consciousness that it seems impossible to detach it and 
survey its content as something independent of the self. 
Human conation is of the essence of human striving and no 
analysis of mind can draw lines of demarcation between 
them. This singular condition of consciousness appears in 
sharp outline when we resort to certain characteristic state- 
ments concerning our introspective data, where it appears 
that conation is indescribable. The conscious subject may 
speak of simple cognition as a sensation of color or tone, of 
immediate affection as a feeling of pleasure or pain, but the 
conative elements of impulse or striving cannot be reduced 
to such expressive phrases. One can only borrow forms of 
cognition and affection and thus speak of a "sense of striving" 
or a "feeling of effort," but no original statement of volition 
seems to be forthcoming, and this simplicity on the part of 
the will seems to forbid all judgment. There is conation, 
but there are no judgments of will, and he who would 
dictate duty to man and outline maxims for his conduct 
must not fail to realize the mysterious character of our inner 
striving. Now the will is the wheel on which intuitionism is 
broken, and no system of ethics can hope to be volitional until 
it revises its notion about human liberty and abandons the 
punctual, private freedom of the individual. Humanity, in 
the fullness of its ceaseless striving, surges into these separate 
crevices and makes the old problem of law-liberty a fallacy of 
double question. 

The peculiar net-work in which the conventional ideal 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 245 

of duty involves itself appears further when we ask, By 
whom is duty impose*}? To this question only two possible 
answers seem at all conceivable, and inasmuch as nature 
knows nothing of ideal obligation, duty is imposed either 
by man or God, that is, by some form of spiritual life. No 
matter which side of the argument we espouse, we are sure 
to involve some degree of contradiction; and where duty 
reduces us to a sharp either-or, we suspect that its dictates 
are not essential to the central striving of humanity. Sup- 
pose that duty is imposed by the will of man in the spirit 
of autonomy and freedom; then the sovereignty of the God- 
head loses some of its significance, inasmuch as the Deity is 
not regarded as the author of the moral law. On the other 
hand, consider the consequence when duty is imposed by the 
Deity and sanctioned by His will; then the supremacy of 
the ethical ideal is threatened and the elevation of the 
Godhead involves the degradation of duty. Scholasticism 
witnessed such a conflict in the controversy between Thomas 
and Scotus, while Protestantism rehabilitated it in the war 
between Calvin and Arminius. He who accepts the tradi- 
tional statement of the problem feels strangely called upon 
to choose between Deity and duty, which can be done only 
at the cost of spiritual unity. 

This dilemma is a most unhappy one and sadly recalls 
the controversy between determinism and free-will. Never- 
theless, the ideal of human striving, which elevated our 
thought above the diremption of fate and freedom, may 
now serve to lift us to that unity of inner life which 
should appear in the midst of the demands that our hu- 
manity makes upon us. From this standpoint, it will appear 
that man is not urged forward by competitive forces called 
fate and freedom, nor is he under the sway of two ideals 
styled Deity and duty, but one and the same humanity 
appeals to him in the corresponding forms of inner and 
outer life. Just as conscience is not an occult principle 
arising from the abyss of our ignorance, but consists rather 
of our own humanity acting in the form of outer restraint, so 
duty is not the dictate of any individual will of man or 
God, but is made up rather of that rational sense of deten- 
tion which our spiritual life exercises upon us. The same 



246 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

principle of human striving which animates the individual 
ego and the whole of humanity has at heart the perfection of 
man by his emancipation from nature. In this consists 
both our fate and our freedom, and for this our human 
worldhood and selfhood came into existence. There is no 
extra-duty which we impose upon our wills, or which the 
Deity imposes upon us; there is only one enormous demand 
which humanity makes upon us when it invests us with 
spiritual life and informs us with conscience and freedom. 
Such a unifying conception of spiritual life conserves the 
interests of idealistic ethics as well as the religious notion of 
the Absolute. Of what advantage would it be to develop a 
conception of morals which, in defiance of both human and 
divine sentiments, should lead to duty for the sake of mere 
duty, or Deity for the sake of Deity? Autonomy in ethics 
and monotheism in religion are not advanced by any such 
formalism, and it is far more valuable to work from within 
the wall of living humanity whence the demands of the 
ideal in both a human and a divine form may be presented. 
To secure the valuable results of imperative morality, it be- 
comes necessary to change the center of discussion from 
the individual will to the universal sense of striving, and 
when once the limitations of private volition are contrasted 
with the broad plan of human activity the need for such 
an alteration in view will become apparent. The spirit 
of characteristic ethics may be preserved in the midst of 
external changes; humanity will suffer no loss when the 
law of duty gives place to a genuine sense of human 
responsibility. 

3 OBLIGATION AS HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY 

To reconstruct the characteristic ideal of duty it has 
been necessary to eliminate the idea of liberty as something 
punctual and private, to make place for a recognition of 
human striving. But this made it necessary for us to recast 
the principle of law binding the individual down to some 
arbitrary form of commandment, and humanity is in no mood 
for this style of treatment. Freedom is an empty benefit, 
while duty is an imposition. Nevertheless, it need not be 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 247 

supposed that all sense of obligation is lost, and the emanci- 
pated moral subject of to-day must not presume that life 
is all privilege wherein he receives from the universe without 
being called upon to give of himself to the world of hu- 
manity. Man still has his obligations and without them he 
could be neither happy nor perfect; when these duties are 
interpreted in the light of human responsibilities and not as 
categorical laws, the influence of the human imperative will 
not be lost. Therefore we may review the leading points 
of duty and observe how easily they transfer their allegiance 
from the realm of rationalistic law to that of human obliga- 
tion. 

Certain formal notions of duty submit themselves for 
consideration at the open court of humanity; first among 
these is the ideal of inness which characterizes human obliga- 
tion. The intuitional method has insisted upon this 
criterion of the moral ideal, and the value of its contention 
can in no wise be gainsaid. From this standpoint, the 
demands of humanity are conceived of as coming from within 
in the form of spiritual impulses which have no connection 
with animal instincts. The rationalistic school can only re- 
gard them as dictates of reason, but their intellectual char- 
acter seems to acquire little more than a negative quality 
in its several determinations. There is something man 
ought to do. But what is that something which is so 
supreme in human life? The intuitionist can regard it in a 
formal fashion only and define it in terms of itself as duty, 
or that which ought to be done. At the same time, he 
attempts to characterize it negatively as something which 
does not please or profit the doer of it. While such a 
cramped notion of human responsibility may maintain the 
inner independence of obligation, it indicates no path of 
progress from the striving individual to the goal of his life. 
Indeed, characteristic ethics, as will appear when the whole 
system is reviewed, has no idea of teleology and thus cannot 
instruct man in the purpose of his incessant striving. 

The just demands of the striving human spirit may be 
determined in the light of human destiny, which involves 
the rise and progress of humanity as well as its culmination 
in an independent order of being. This notion could better 



248 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

be expressed by the term Bestimmung, which is only half 
translated by the term vocation; its philosophical value is 
great enough to include the inner and outer forms of human 
striving, which are set at variance with each other by the 
terms fate and freedom. So long as an alien world of nature 
is thought to encompass man, anything like outer constraint 
could only be looked upon as inimical to the purpose of 
human freedom; hence arose the acrimonious contrast be- 
tween law and liberty, where the "free moral agent" felt 
constrained to hate the one and love the other. But now it 
appears that owing to his amphibolous position in the uni- 
verse, man is not wholly under the sway of physical law 
nor does his humanity demand sharp rational freedom. 
Man has rather destiny, vocation, and a calling to humanity, 
or that happy sense of constraint expressed by the German 
term Bestimmung. For the sake of private freedom or some 
liberum arbitrium indifferentiae would man forego the bless- 
ings of his human vocation? To achieve his duty will he 
relinquish his destiny, and exchange his humanity for free 
moral agency? 

Human responsibility finds man in the actual human 
order, not in nature or reason alone, and in this living field 
of striving he is swayed by free fate or human destiny. For 
this reason, he is not called upon to obey the laws of either 
nature or reason, but it is expected of him that he will accept 
human responsibility. Such responsibility consists in assum- 
ing an appropriate attitude toward the world, whose image 
must be reflected by the mind, just as its activity is to be 
perfected by the human will. These phases of human re- 
sponsibility appear in both culture and conduct. In order 
to live as a human being man must exercise a due amount 
of intelligence as he surveys the world about him, and even 
in his primitive condition he secures a certain amount of 
valuable information upon which science is destined to be 
built. And just as man, who is not natural enough to live an 
animal life of mere sensation, has his knowledge, so he 
begins to develop conduct in a life which is so detached 
from the order of nature as to render necessary something 
more than instinct. In this two-fold fashion, man is re- 
quired to assume a sort of metaphysical and moral responsi- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 249 

bility due to his original observations of the outer and inner 
forms of nature. Art and religion are freer forms of human 
creation and demand different methods of explanation, while 
they, like logic and ethics, serve to indicate the superiority 
of humanity over nature. 

The ideals of humanity, which thus express themselves 
in culture of the mind and conduct of life, can be expressed 
only as we depart from immediate individualized duty and 
consider man in the light of one enormous human respon- 
sibility. This he assumes by knowledge and action, and in 
the progress of his spiritual life he develops a world of his 
own whence special ethical systems are led to speak of a 
life according to nature, or conduct according to reason when 
the possibility of such ideals is found in the sense of human 
responsibility, which would not suffer man to remain in the 
domain of immediacy. In the midst of his human striving, 
man is under the dominion of law and duty, and instead of 
acting so that the maxim of his conduct might become uni- 
versal law, he has created a moral world-order peculiar to the 
genius of his humanity, the product of both conduct and 
culture. This has been a happy burden to the true child of 
humanity who has no other thought than the perfection of 
his implicit spiritual life. In this mood of eternal cheerful- 
ness, these aspiring human subjects have been what St. 
James was fond of calling doers of the word or active egos 
who were not content with mere action or consciousness, but 
strove for some rational deed which should stand for the 
creative work of humanity. In his contemplative conquest, 
man has enjoyed the freedom of his fate, while he has 
found in his humanity a yoke which is easy and a burden 
that is light. 

By assuming the responsibility of life both in thought and 
action, man evinces a definite form of spontaneity which 
carries him onward out of the confines of immediate tem- 
poral, special existence. This is not done without risk, and 
the positing of an independent order of being beyond nature 
leads man into an atmosphere of life the very opposite of the 
easy optimism that characterized the final view of naturism 
in the ideal of eudaemonia. Human responsibility invites 
conflict and since man occupies an amphibolous position in 



250 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the world his departure from nature is calculated to lead 
him into doubt and moral despair. Culture and ideal con- 
duct are not always the good angels of our life, since they 
create needs which experience cannot satisfy, as well as 
ideals which seem likely to remain unrealized. In his at- 
tempt to accomplish the demands of his inner nature, man 
can think of no other method than that of denial, and just 
as the climax of naturistic ethics found him applying the 
principle of moderation, characteristic morality ends in 
renunciation. If man cannot assert his spiritual character 
in the midst of nature he can negate his being in the world 
of sense, and thus prepare the way, so he imagines, for the 
life of spirit. Such an attempt assumes the form of rigorism 
whose interests are those of humanity, however inappro- 
priate its methods may be. 



VI 

THE LIFE OF RIGORISM 

As the completion of Naturistic Ethics witnessed the 
rise of eudaemonism, so Characteristic Ethics is destined to 
end in rigorism. Where, as in the case of the former, 
pleasure and desire, utility and well-being, lead man to 
postulate the ultimate ideal of free activity in the world of 
immediacy, the contrary ideals of conscience and rectitude, 
freedom and duty urge him to strive after a form of sheer 
morality which neutralizes all human interests. Both views 
seek to apprehend life as a whole, and where one ends in 
moderation the other cultimates in renunciation, while the 
joyous pursuit of the immediate gives way to a grim realiza- 
tion of the remote and ultimate. Where both views ob- 
serve the unity of life, they are not ignorant of man's 
position in the universe or of his relation to his humanity. 

I — THE IDEAL OF RENUNCIATION 

In striking contrast to the genial ideal of eudaemonism, 
characteristic ethics upholds a harsh rigorism of renunciation. 
Eudaemonism was a theory expressing the belief that life 
cannot be wholly receptive, but demands a certain degree of 
reaction on the part of humanity. But eudaemonism availed 
itself of purely aesthetical resources which were expected to 
yield permanent and impersonal pleasure. Where activity 
was involved it never implied striving, and its general char- 
acter was that of artistic play. The value of ideal activity, 
as suggested by both ancient and modern thinkers, consists in 
the appropriate form of occupation which fills out the pro- 
portions of man's life, thus preventing ennui. Man's 
superiority to hedonic naturism is shown by the fact that he 
craves ideal pleasures in response to which the world of art 
has been created. Eudaemonism is thus a phase of aesthe- 

251 



252 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ticfsm, for in the quest of contemplation man is also seeking 
peace or ataraxy. 

But the rigorist believes that ideal activity is not suffi- 
cient to achieve the victory of spirit over sense, and in seed- 
ing some more regorous means it appeals to religion where its 
rival had turned toward art. The fundamental principle 
here involved is that of spiritual striving, but in practical 
experience the doctrine amounts to a radical activism accord- 
ing to whose tenets life is made to equal labor. The moral 
commandment thus becomes a commandment to act, the 
result of which is moralism. "Look at Hellenism, the 
Italian Renaissance, or French culture," they say; "were 
men better moralists because they were superior artists"? 
Forgetting that at times when men are most thoroughly 
surrendered to morality, they are not intellectually alive to 
the meaning of life and the essence of the world, the 
moralistic view of life has insisted that strict activity is 
paramount. Labor has been commended because it tends to 
subdue men, while the exciting effects of artistic activity 
have been condemned as unsafe. Let man be kept at 
work and he will be out of danger for the time being, 
while the fatigue resulting from his efforts will tend to 
cripple his powers for vicious pleasure. 

Eudaemonism may not aim at the spiritual, but it does 
try to elevate man above nature; rigorism seeks to reduce 
his sensuous existence to a minimum. Both estimates of 
man agree that life should not be submerged in nature, but 
where eudaemonism counsels man to touch sense lightly by 
the way of mere suggestion, rigorism insists that he abandon 
it altogether and accept virtue as such. Eudaemonism 
seizes the mind of man in a moment of classic contemplation 
and leads him to blend spirit and sense in such a way that 
virtue shall seem natural and beautiful. Rigorism is not 
without artistic merit, but its worth consists, not in beauty, 
but in sublimity, and its method is the romantic rather than 
the classic. The spectacle of a living and dying rigorist 
has something artistic about it, for he stands fixed like 
Donatello's St. George or enters paradise through Ghibertfs 
bronze doors. Again, eudaemonism is optimistic in its culti- 
vation of the garden of immediacy, for it assumes that nature 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 253 

contains man and that his endeavors can be accomplished and 
accounted for upon the basis of what is given. Rigorism 
is pessimistic and calls, upon man to renounce the "world" 
in which he lives and the flesh that envelops him, and where 
the naturistic ideal expects man to accept life, the character- 
istic one demands that he reject it. 

2 — LIFE AS SINFUL 

The traditional view of our humanity as shared by 
both schools overlooks the fact that man is both able and 
willing to renounce, not only happiness, but life itself. 
They assume that man is by nature a creature of eudaemonia 
and that he can only strive to be happy; the only difference 
in their methods is found in the fact that one allows man 
to be happy directly, while the other insists that he shall 
first deserve happiness. But man as human can will against, 
as well as for, himself and the world enveloping him, and 
his desire so constitutes him that pain as well as pleasure 
may be an object of interest and a point toward which he 
strives. Hence renunciation is as possible a path of conduct 
as moderation, and no excess of fanaticism is needed to 
cause man to turn against nature and strive for nothing 
as such. The bland hedonic notion prevailing in both 
schools of ethics is invalidated by the manifest tendency on 
the part of man to deny himself, and where nature uses 
both life and death in the perfection of its creatures, man 
learns to die that he may live. Thus it comes about that 
man learns to accept the death-idea, based as this is on an 
instinct as strong, though not as clear, as the desire for life, 
and in the midst of this consciousness it becomes possible 
for rare souls who are raised above the struggle for life to 
have a peculiar sentiment of death, a condition at times 
paralleled by the vehement passion for destruction aroused 
by the unhappy circumstances of a turbulent existence. 
Contemplating the shade as well as the light of life, man 
does not hesitate to abandon the unintelligible heights of 
joy and descend to the "valley of vision." He is not only 
willing but anxious to suffer, and while not hard-hearted 
he is not wholly above cruelty. Duty has made him a 



254 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Danteist. 

The impulse toward renunciation appears in the awful 
sentiment that life itself is sinful. The inner history of 
our humanity is not wanting in such nihilistic ideals. Among 
the Chinese the wisdom of Laotsze inculcates "doing noth- 
ing" as a means of attaining to the negative Tao, which 
"does nothing in its regular course for the sake of doing it, 
and so there is nothing which it does not do." (Tao Teh 
King, Pt. ii, Ch. 37) ; a consistent nihilism further in- 
dicated by the metaphorical characters "Dumb Inaction" 
and "Do-Nothing" (Writings of Kwang Sze, Bk. xxn 
Pt. 11 Sect, xv ). A more active form of negation ap- 
pears in the Bhagavad-Gita which treats life as the result 
of sin and seeks to inculcate such a Yoga discipline as to 
do away with one's sense of individuality and the desire for 
personal action. The ideal man behaves like the tortoise 
who withdraws from the world and retires to his inner 
being. This notion which makes man distrustful of exist- 
ence, is even more fatal to his sense of selfhood. It inflicts 
upon him the consciousness that he himself ought not to be, 
because in his very personality there is something wrong, 
so that he is of no value in the world. It was in this spirit 
that Schopenhauer's contention for the universal will-to-live 
set him in opposition to the egoistic will-to-live, as indeed 
to the principle of individuation, and led him to select from 
Calderon's "Life is a Dream" the dictum declaring that 
man's greatest crime consists in being born (Welt ah Wille 
u. Vors. §63). The world in its totality seems to be no 
place of individuals and, as we shall see in Part Four, the 
harsh effects of renunciatory morals can be offset only by 
adopting an idea of selfhood which shall be consistent with 
the totality of the world. The existent self with its 
natural desires cannot assert its being in contrast with the 
world-whole, so that the ideal of renunciation does not have 
difficulty in persuading man that his is an evil life. Rigorism 
thus becomes, as it were, a reality, wherein negation and 
pain have a constructive significance, while selfhood is re- 
pudiated as something fundamentally bad. As Pascal put 
it, le mo'i est ha'issable (PenseeSj Sect. vn. 75, Hachette,) 
and as will appear at the close of this work the ethics of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 255 

selfhood ascends only as the ethics of renunciation descends. 
Yet it is not the ego as ego which feels the criminality 
of his existence, but the ego as subject of desire. In Bud- 
dhism, the root of alf evil is found in desire whose removal 
is supposed to bring about salvation. Among the several 
attitudes which man may sustain toward the world, there 
is that of expressing desire for it in its sensuousness and 
immediacy, for by his very nature man desires life in the 
world. This life-desire, which renunciation seeks to 
neutralize, contains something beyond itself as a process of 
experience, for in it is found an inherent sense of value. 
Indeed, as we shall see in Part Four, the most adequate 
psychology of value seems to consist in the desirable. When, 
therefore, renunciation attacks desire, it directs its forces 
against the very citadel of life, and brings about man's 
redemption upon the basis of his destruction. This is the 
method indicated by Buddhism in connection with the 
"Noble Truth" as expressed in "Wheel of the Law", or, as 
Rhy Davids translates it, "Kingdom of Righteousness." 
It contains the truth concerning the fact and cause of suffer- 
ing, as also the removal of it by means of religious exercise. 
When the "Book of the Great Decease" tells how the 
Blessed One rejected life, it notes (§ 10) how he broke out 
into a hymn of exultation: 

"His sum of life the sage renounced, 
The cause of life immeasurable or small; 
With inward joy and calm, he broke, 
Like coat of mail his life's own cause." 
The form of Nirvana attained is of the living nature 
of Arahatship, experienced when both desire and indivi- 
duality are practically extinguished by a combination of 
contemplation and asceticism. This living Nirvana was 
perhaps in Schopenhauer's mind when he contended for 
negation of the will-to-live and against suicide as a means, 
which in his mind would defeat that moralistic end {Welt 
ah Wille u. Vors. § 69). 

While the practical Semitic tendency in Christianity 
forbids the treatment of the problem upon such a cosmic 
basis, it became possible for that religion to separate man 
from his world and reduce his life to an inner conflict. 



256 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Love and hate undergo peculiar transformations whereby 
the individual is exhorted to abandon the world in which 
he lives and to love others rather than himself. The 
natural desire to be one's self in one's world is the ambi- 
tion most remote from him who accepts the principles of 
the Kingdom of God. This practical attitude toward the 
world is in harmony with the speculative principles of belief 
and doubt. Like the Buddhist, the Christian must doubt 
in order to believe; that is, he turns away from the per- 
ceptible in order to accept the imperceptible in the form of 
spiritual life. And thus the general truth of the inner 
life is established upon the ruins of sense and selfhood. 

Our modern situation is profoundly affected by these 
religious compunctions, and we have become so impressed 
with the value of renunciation that we are ready to cast 
out of life, not only sense, but reason itself. This was 
attempted by Kant in his peculiar passion for morality. 
Kant's ethics was erected upon the ruins of metaphysics, 
a process which made the will seem wiser than the intel- 
lect. Morality was called upon to play a double part, for 
it was first a doctrine of Sollen and then a theory of Sein, 
according to which the world of reality was built upon 
virtue. In this moral blindness, Kant abandoned culture 
for conduct whereby he showed himself strong and critical 
in his treatment of truth and beauty, but weak and fearful 
in his attitude toward ethics and right. His was a half- 
work, marked everywhere by temperament and a Semitic 
regard for conduct according to rule. Kant knew logic 
and succeeded in viewing it critically, but he did not know 
life, and his attempt to subsume humanity under the cate- 
gorical imperative was disastrous. The way in which he 
pitted the practical against the speculative and urged the 
will to throttle the intellect under the academic banner of 
"primacy of practical reason" is too well known to need 
comment, too melancholy to desire emphasis, and we can 
only regret that our great modern did not have the courage 
to view conscience as he viewed causality. For why should 
the causal category be limited to experience while the 
categorical imperative was granted the freedom of the 
ideal, with the effect of promoting a weak phenomenalism 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 257 

in metaphysics and a strong but cramped rationalism in 
morality? For all that can be said against a metaphysical 
thing-in-itself may just as well be urged against a moralistic 
duty-in-itself, and he* who, like Kant, admits that the in- 
tellect ends in a Logik des Scheins can only conclude that 
the will is threatened with an Ethik des Scheins. As for 
Kant, he did not see that to divest will of reason and re- 
invest it with duty was to reduce his ethics to absurdity 
through the removal of it from human life and its ethical 
demands; and when he says, "Oh, duty! there is nothing 
charming about thee." (Crit. Prac. Reason, P. 215) he 
might also have said "and nothing true, either." No longer 
does he believe in life. 

Schopenhauer made the will renounce sense where Kant 
had turned it against reason, and thereby restored rigorism 
to its proper place in human life. At the same time, his 
pessimistic view of nature and man fitted him for the posi- 
tion of ascetic priest, while his systematic view of aesthetics 
and ethics suffer him to arrange eudaemonism and rigorism 
as stages in the achievement of a life-ideal. Accepting 
Kant's general view of beauty, Schopenhauer elaborates and 
intensifies it by making aesthetics serve the interest of man 
in quieting the will-to-live. He who is raised to the height 
of artistic conetmplation sees the world as one and feels 
himself a will-less subject cleansed temporarily of desire 
and its stain. But not all are able to produce the beautiful, 
and at best the lofty moment of pure contemplation is 
transitory, so that resort to sterner means must be had 
and the ideal of contemplation gives way before that of 
renunciation (cf. Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung, § 60). 
Not all of us can be artists, but we can all be moralists, and 
where art quiets and cleanses the will-to-live, the ethics of 
rigorism destroys it altogether by leading man to denial 
and negation. Schopenhauer's argument in favor of renun- 
ciation commands the assent of Tolstoi and the dissent 
of Nietzsche in a strange mingling of optimism and pessi- 
mism. Both have at heart the interests of nihilism, and 
while their theories of life from the standpoint of practical 
realization are opposed, they uphold one and the same form 
of theoretical negation. Only a decadent age could yield 



258 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

such an example of blood-fusion between opposed forms of 
life, and thus our own age involves itself in the paradox of 
affirmonego as it attempts to decide between the respective 
claims of nature and spirit. 

3. THE IDEALIZATION OF PAIN 

Certain features of the present show how our opera and 
drama are wrestling with such problems. Nowhere may 
this be observed more clearly than in the case of Wagner. 
His resort to renunciation is shown in the two parts of the 
Niebelungen Ring which develop the characters of the law- 
defying, optimistic Siegfried, and the ever-weakening, 
pessimistic Wotan. Even though the tetralogy contains 
this double motive, both the Siegfried-drama and the 
Wotan-drama are involved in renunciation. And the ideal 
of an all-conquering, all-pervading love which causes Sieg- 
fried and Brunnhilde to repudiate law, finally consumes 
them in a fire of expiation. The farewell to the world, 
uttered by Brunnhilde is only the song before the twilight 
of the gods and heroes. Renunciation has taken hold upon 
them, so that both Siegfried and Wotan are reduced to the 
same level. This is the common end of the characters who 
earlier in the drama stood for the contraries of optimism 
and pessimism, of hope and fear. Light is shed upon the 
moral problem of the Ring when it is observed that Wagner, 
having surveyed the whole ethical field, was content to rest 
in resignation. In one of his letters to Roeckel, dated 
August 23, 1856, he expressed his belief in renunciation as* 
the highest ethical category, saying, "Kannst du Dir eine 
moralische Handlung anders vorstellen als unter dem 
Begriffe der Entsagung?" Even his victorious art could 
not save him from this defeat whose terms of capitulation 
are expressed in the music and poetry of Parsival. Such is 
the Wagnerian conception of life. 

As the Ring indicates the decline of German naturism 
and the twilight of the fair gods and heroes before the 
night of Christian renunciation, so Ibsen's "Emperor and 
Galilean" repeats the story of the downfall witnessed in 
Grecian naturism when the Emperor gave way to the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 259 

Galilean and the worship of Apollo was forgotten in the 
praise of Jesus. The result is another triumph of rigorism, 
although the Emperor Julian attempts to urge the age on 
toward a third empire, 1 wherein the empire of the spirit, 
having swallowed up the empire of sense, itself succumbs 
to the realm of the Emperor — God, who comes into being 
as the 'man who wills himself" (Act 111. Sc. iv). But 
just as the Emperor Julian cries out, "The third empire is 
at hand" (Act v. Sc. 11), he is pierced by the "Roman's 
spear from Golgotha," and dies exclaiming, "Thou hast 
conquered, Galilean" (lb. Sc. in). The victory of the 
Galilean over both northern and southern gods is the vic- 
tory of the negative over the positive, of pain over pleasure, 
of spirit over sense. In Ibsen's "Rosmersholm", where, in 
the full freedom of an emancipated woman, Rebecca West 
asserts her independence and goes to work at a social re- 
form that never hesitates in its desire to accomplish valued 
ends, the heroine finally falls a victim of what she calls the 
"Rosmersholm view of life." Thus her outlook is clouded 
and her strength exhausted in the presence of the renuncia- 
tory ideal, and at last she herself succumbs to the "Rosmer 
view of duty and expiration" (Act iv). Wagner and 
Ibsen do not present a unitary argument in favor of renun- 
ciation, for with Wagner the ravens of renunciation do not 
appear in the sky until the hero has made a full test of the 
contrary ideal of self-realization. The same is true of 
Ibsen, who presents the positive and negative ideals side by 
side, or effects a transmutation from one to the other, as 
when the egoistic Peer Gynt, looking into the question of 
selfhood, learns that "to be one's self is to slay one's self" 
(Act v. Sc. ix). 

The whole range of Russian literature with its in- 
dwelling "black-earth force", as Turgenieff styles it, as 
also with its frigid nihilism and snow-bound ideals, affords 
a promising field for negativistic views of human welfare. 
Russian supermen who seek to live their own individual 
lives are proscribed by the very air they breathe. Thus in 
"On the Eve", Shubin complains of the Russian land. 
"There is no one, as yet, among us; there are no men, look 
where you will. All are either small fry, or squabblers, 



260 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

petty Hamlets, cannibals, either underground gloom and 
thicket, or bullies, empty triflers, and drum sticks." To 
which Ivan Ivanovitch replies, "They will come? O thou 
soil! thou black-earth force! thou hast said: They will 
come" (xxx). Tolstoi exalts a more spiritual ideal of 
resignation wherein man acquires his renunciation as his 
fundamental desire, at the same time he infuses his ideal 
with the sentiments of compassion and non-resentment. 
Gorky's intuition of life unites harshness with tenderness, but 
its most emphatic teaching is that humanity is adapted to and 
prepared for suffering. Thus in "The Night Refuge," Luka, 
the pilgrim says, "Every one endures life in his own way" 
(Act n). 

The attack upon his ideal of depression, as indeed the 
repudiation of all resignation, centers in Nietzsche, although 
he was not without predecessors, such as Stendhal and Stir- 
ner, nor without followers. Nietzsche's bitter antagonism 
breaks out upon every side of his own weakened nature, but 
seems to find its foci in the "will-to-power" and the "super- 
man." With a nature personally impaired, as was 
Wagner's, he, however, refuses to submit to the renuncia- 
tory ideal, and carries on his warfare until darkness over- 
takes him. His maxim is the antipode of Pascal's le moi 
est haissable, to which by contrast he gives special prom- 
inence, while he does not fail to renounce Geulincx's ideal 
of self-despection — despectio sui. The Third Essay in the 
Genealogy of Morals (tr. Hausemann), rejects all forms 
of asceticism and incites an attack upon all moral cruelties, 
as Nietzsche considers them. The result consists in show- 
ing how real is rigorism, and with what difficulty it is to 
be replaced by a happier ideal. 

The current repudiation of this ideal involves an at- 
tack upon the retroactive methods peculiar to the indivi- 
dual's reaction upon himself and his world. Man's attack 
upon himself is carried on in the name of repentance where- 
in he repudiates himself through metanoia and in his penance* 
refuses to sympathize with his former self. Sudermann 
carries on an attack upon this ideal when in Es War, Leo 
the hero, having broken two commandments of the Deca- 
logue, struggles against repentence and constantly fortifies 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 261 

himself by saying, "Nichts bereue; immer besser machen." 
The tendency of Sudermann's view of humanity is to make 
rigorism look more or less illusory and as an act unneces- 
sary. In characteristic ethics, where remorse of conscience, 
non-resentment of evil, and denial of self have a firm place, 
no one need inquire concerning the appropriateness of 
repentance wherein spiritual life strives to gain complete 
sway over the individual's life by unmaking his past for 
him. For rigorism, repentance is healthful, and when the 
claims of duty are to be met, some such revolution must 
take place in the life of man. But all this depends upon 
what we are expected to be and to do, and the validity of 
repentance depends upon the value of rigorism. The path 
which the twentieth century is opening does not seem to 
lead to Damascus. 

The other phase of renunciation is doubt, from which 
rigorism can provide no means of escape. All doubt is due 
to man's odd position in the world where he can ally him- 
self with neither nature nor reason, but can only lose himself 
in a perplexity which follows when he sees how far re- 
moved from experience are the ideals of his spirit. Our 
19th century agnosticism was probably inspired by the hope 
of finding peace in the renunciation of all fundamental 
knowledge; for what can be more despairing than a sense 
of spiritual life which is beyond our powers of comprehen- 
sion ? A paganism which was beyond belief and doubt can 
give more happiness than Christendom, with its internal 
conflicts, can afford; but can the older view of life advance 
man toward his human perfection? And are we not justi- 
fied in neglecting the early attempts at disciplining man 
which Hellenism made, when we see how much greater 
was the humanity of Him who was touched with the an- 
cient anguish of the earth. Better the inner diremption of 
doubt than a misleading naivete, we say, and yet we have 
the presentiment that man's spiritual unity should not be 
torn asunder by the conflicting claims of sense and spirit, 
of experience and human hope. Neither repentance nor 
doubt is presented in any close connection with the august 
plan of life that humanity has arranged for man, and we 
must wait until a third and more unified view of life is 



262 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

entertained before we can decide concerning the respective 
claims of "moderation" and "renunciation." The decadent 
drama shows that our age is not wanting in responsiveness 
to sentiment, as it moulds its ideal according to the lines 
of a woman's forehead, while it views the world through 
her hair. We must regret, however, that poetry presents 
the ideal of renunciation in suggestive and unhappy con- 
nection with sensuality, as in the instance of "John the 
Baptist" and "Salome" ; wherein rigorism and animalism are 
so strangely blended. The desire to deny self and renounce 
life is ineradicable, and while few become Buddhist Bhik- 
shus or Christian monks, all men are capable of negation. 
In his sensuous capacity man is by no means sure of him- 
self, so that his anxiety for spiritual safety leads him to 
turn away from the world of sense; and thus he shows 
that the love and hatred of pleasure coexist in the same 
human breast according to a law not unknown in the 
tragedy of the eudaemonistic Greeks — the law of Zeus 
that "pain is gain." 

4. — THE PASSION FOR MORALITY 

Like pleasure, virtue represents one of our human in- 
terests, being connected with our destiny. This, coupled 
with the fact that desire may direct our will toward either 
pleasure or pain, makes possible a veritable passion for 
morality extending all the way from the love of virtue in 
its beauty to fanaticism and paranoia. Our modern moral- 
ists are strangely concerned for virtue as though in its sup- 
posed weakness it could not take care of itself. The utili- 
tarian seeks to account for it by associating it with pleasure 
while the intuitionist feels the unhappy contrast between 
rectitude and advantage. But humanity rises above such 
explanations and schemes, for it is possessed of a will which 
is ready to set up either a positive goal in pleasure or a 
negative one in pain. When, therefore, the rigorist leaves 
the will to its own volitions he need not worry lest introspec- 
tion disclose a sub-conscious trend of hedonism making the 
will respond to pleasure alone, because our activities run 
ahead of our judgments and the will stands in need of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 263 

restraint rather than hedonic reinforcement. The modern 
is coming into being as the "man who wills himself," so 
that a sane philosophy of voluntarism which shall place the 
will where it belongs is one of our greatest needs in an age 
of blind progress and rash pragmatism. 

Man is not too moral, but his morality is spurious; he 
is not too willful, but is possessed of an inferior quality of 
volition; hence the forces of reason should seek to turn 
freedom from its empirical to an intelligible form, accord- 
ing to which man may act as a human character who is 
conscious of his position in the world and his problem in 
life. Our current philosophical systems reveal their blind- 
ness when in an age of activism they keep urging industrial 
and social progress which goes on at an extraordinary rate 
at the expense of the inner life. The contrary ideal, that 
of passivism is needed to check the morality of passion by 
the morality of sentiment, whose essence is found in thought 
as well as deed. Whether contemplation be the ultimate 
ideal or not, some degree of intellectual restraint is needed 
to-day to bring man to himself as human. Why strive to 
attain to an ideal when that ideal is not defined in thought? 
We need not indulge in the paradox that man is over- 
moralized, but we may assert without fear of error that our 
morality has advanced at the expense of our intelligence, in 
accordance with the mistaken and anti-Socratic notion that 
all men know what is right and need only moral impulsion 
to make them perform it. But this view makes conscience 
do more than the moral sense of humanity is supposed to 
perform. Certainly one may be too scrupulous and lose his 
moral resolution; he may become sanctimonious and thus 
suffer his good to be evil spoken of, and in addition to mor- 
bid conscience and fanatical faith, one may be moralized to 
the extreme of becoming demoralized. At any rate, the 
instinct is not so weak that it needs nursing from ethical 
theory, for it may become so strong in its Stoicism, so bitter 
in its Cynicism that it must be fostered by art. Both, con- 
science and the categorical imperative will take care of 
themselves, and if the "good men" of America to-day are 
able to use Puritan morality in the building up of fortunes 
magnificent beyond our power to conceive, we stand in 



264 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

need of a new system of moral values with less moral 
earnestness about them. 

The possibility of a purely moral attitude is never called 
into question by those who know the utmost capabilities of 
human nature. Man may stand in perfect moral isolation, 
either silencing his other faculties for the time or eradicat- 
ing them altogether; in this striking position he is ready to 
will his own extinction. Something in the will leads our 
humanity to seek pain with all the zest of pleasure's pur- 
suit, and commandments to renounce and deny, to hate and 
slay the self have always flourished in the human heart. 
For this reason, moralists are able to deduce a categorical 
imperative or a denial of the will-to-live, and man, whose 
instinct for spiritual death is as strong as his love of sensuous 
life, is more than ready to obey. We need not raise the 
foolish question of numbers and thus inquire whether those 
who love life or those who hate life are in the majority; 
the fact remains that man can repudiate himself, for which 
purpose he has at his command a will as strong as death. 
This is the inner truth of Yoga philosophy which makes 
use of that reserve of volition which is at the command of 
him who through discipline and denial will set himself 
aside. Once liberated within the soul, the life-destroying 
instinct can scarcely be checked in its effort to annihilate all 
interests, for it carries man as far toward negation as natural 
passion urges him toward assertion of his animal nature. The 
student of morals may observe this in his own experience, or 
he may examine it as it is reflected in some sincere study of 
humanity, like Balzac's Human Comedy. There, among 
studies of other forms of obsession in connection with avarice, 
lust, or revenge, the reader finds striking examples of moral- 
istic mania exhibited by such characters as Pere Goriot, 
Eugenie Grandet, Benassis the Country Doctor, Marguerite 
Claes. 

Our passions are at war with our sentiments as well as 
our senses, and the advance of ethics is often the retreat of 
aesthetics. Through the restraining power of conscience 
individuals are often hindered from performing beautiful 
deeds, and in the fear lest one cannot entertain pleasure 
without passion we cast out joy and beauty altogether. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 265 

Hence arises the contrast between eudaemonism and rigorism, 
where ethical sentiment is in conflict with moral passion. 
Systems that counsel man to redeem himself by denial are 
most plausible when the*y attack nature, least so when they 
proceed to invalidate culture. But the psychologic fact 
remains that man has power to lay down his life, for the 
death-instinct is not much weaker than the life-instinct and 
the will that affirms can also deny. For the most part, the 
nihilism of renunciation directs its weapons against natural 
instinct and seeks to supplant animality by spirituality. 
Such is the usual course of religion with its inimical atti- 
tude toward the "flesh" and the "world", and the extreme 
methods sometimes recommended by Buddhism and Christ- 
ianity are intelligible in the light of the vicious sensuality 
which makes the instinctive life of man more degrading 
even than animalism. Man was not destined to ascend 
from the domain of flora to spiritual life without passing 
through the stage of faunal existence, and our most pro- 
found systems of life make careful provision for this phase 
of man's being. Where the renunciatory ideal turns its 
attention to art and culture, and thus seeks to set aside 
symbolic forms of naturalism, as also the gentle approxima- 
tions to spirituality which are commonly found in 
aesthetes, it involves the plan of life in a most serious con- 
flict and sets ideal at variance with ideal. One cannot say 
"Virtue have I loved and beauty have I hated," unless 
these terms indicate only a difference of degree in affec- 
tion. Vice we are willing to forego, for we find nothing 
of value in these unnatural forms of human passion; but 
renunciation must be so construed and so limited that it 
may make room for culture and aesthetic enjoyment. At 
this juncture we are confronted by the conflict between cul- 
ture and conduct, but we cannot survey these ideals clearly 
until we have traced man's source in the world toward a 
final, or humanistic, view of life. 

5 THE HATRED OF LIFE 

Our previous examination of self-love as a practical 
notion was intended to show how difficult it is for the in- 



266 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

dividual to realize or even to find himself in the pursuit of 
personal pleasure. The form of selfhood whch is involved 
in such a scheme is so weak and unworthy that it cannot 
rule consciousness or guide man to any tenable position in 
the world of humanity. Hence we do not call egoism bad, 
but look upon it as empty. Since human selfhood is in no 
wise bound up with self-love, it becomes possible to culti- 
vate the ego by means of a practice totally different, or that 
of self-hatred: and in the larger world of individuals we 
meet one who loves his life, 6 ^tXwv rrjv xpvxqv avrov, and 
another who hates it, 6 //.tow ttjv \pvyrjv avrov. Indeed, in 
the blind clinging to life man reveals an attitude 
which mingles self-love and self-hatred, for in both pleasure 
and pain he longs to find the self which enjoys and surfers. 
The very impulse which leads man to seek happiness may 
turn against him and persuade him to trust misery, and a 
Hellenic love of life may change to a Hebraic fear of exist- 
ence. It is a hasty psychology that turns the stream of 
consciousness in the direction of pleasure alone, and an 
equally heedless form of ethics which assumes that man 
is naturally inclined toward happiness. 

Pessimism is a positive condition of things based upon 
the reality of pain, and he who inclines toward self-hatred 
and has no real aversion to sorrow assumes an attitude of 
confidence in misery as though it were better calculated to 
teach him reality. The appreciation of this sinister tend- 
ing should prevent the hedonist from dogmatizing about 
pleasure and happiness, just as it ought to warn the rigorist 
against inculcating the life-destroying ideals of law and 
sacrifice. Man's capacity for pain has not received its due 
ethical estimate, and how blind has been the method of 
rigorism in its desire to have man suffer! While this may 
sound ironical, can it be denied that where one ethical 
school has upheld a morality of pleasure the other has 
defended a morality of pain? Conscience lives in remorse, 
rectitude ignores human desire, duty tends to destroy life 
itself. There can be no doubt that rigorism distrusts hap- 
piness and believes that the ideal can be found in the prac- 
tice of pain, and the love of virtue has not failed to instill 
the hatred of pleasure. It may seem paradoxical to speak 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 267 

of man as one who makes neither pleasure nor pain his 
object, but so detached from experience is the inner sense 
of human existence that, instead of having pleasure and 
pain as his masters, man* keeps them as the servants of his 
humanity. He weighs and values them and chooses 
eudaemonism or rigorism according to the optimism or 
pessimism of his view. 

In view of the pessimistic atmosphere that envelops life, 
it is unwise to counsel man to expect happiness as such; 
and it is none the less unnecessary to urge him to renuncia- 
tion. Man, when under the influence of spirit, has a cer- 
tain appetite for pain, and is possessed with the notion that 
sorrow has the power of ennobling; at the same time he 
feels that pain finds him in a position where he has nothing 
to lose and everything to gain. One may condemn such a 
method of conduct for its cowardice, and may look upon the 
ascetic as one who gives up the problem of life altogether 
simply because he cannot solve it. Here the eudaemonist 
may make claim to some superiority when, like the ancient 
Aristippus, he contends that the man who enters into pleasure 
and demonstrates his lordship over it is wiser and more 
ethical than the Cynic who will not trust himself to enjoy 
life. Nevertheless the issues of life are so great that serious 
systems of ethics and religion are unwilling to trifle with 
the minor elements of existence, but sink at once into the 
very midst of human life where they seek some safe path 
of moral realization or religious redemption. Pain seems 
to be more trustworthy because it has a certain touch of 
reality about it, while happiness is always superficial. 

More material for a philosophy of renunciation is forth- 
coming in the melancholy fact of death. Why emphasize 
the joy of living, or center one's activity in culture when the 
passage of a few decades will bring the lordly man down to 
the dust again? Renunciation leads man to rise above 
mere existence and survey his human career as a combina- 
tion of life and death, whereby the recipient of this somber 
view instills a certain amount of death into his very life. 
Early Christiantity was so possessed of the spirit of renun- 
ciation that it well-nigh interchanged these ideas and found 
life in death and death in life. Just as the ideal of modera- 



268 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

tion is due to a perception of harmony between the sensuous 
and spiritual in us, whereby aesthetic judgment and artistic 
creation become possible, so renunciation arises in a religious 
mood of consciousness wherein the individual feels con- 
strained to remove every possible trace of sense for fear of 
the stain which it may occasion. How vain it seems to 
speak of eudaemonia when the flesh which feels the pleasure 
will soon seek corruption? And why should a theory of 
life be sugered to delude mortals into the expectation of 
happiness when humanity is ever subject to the destiny of 
death? Renunciation anticipates death and practices death 
by leading man to deny himself and negate the will-to-live; 
by so doing it brings man to a consciousness of his human 
reality and in the discipline of death teaches him how to 
live. Eudaemonism strives after Euthanasia, and hence it 
was that Montaigne wished that death might find him 
busy in the garden. But, from the standpoint of death, re- 
nunciation seems to indicate a more consistent path, for it 
makes the coming of death a matter of no surprise. The 
death of a eudaemonist is not the sublime spectacle of the 
death suffered by one who has renounced life already, and 
it is no matter of chance that religion has embraced the 
renunciatory ideal. Human striving for spiritual life as 
instilled by religious belief cannot compromise with sense 
in the world of immediacy, but insists upon sheer spirit 
even where the practical demands of life seem to necessitate 
something more immediate and fruitful. 

In spite of its contrast to eudaemonism, rigorism is no 
less antipathetic to the culture of the human spirit. This 
is due to the fact that the demand for virtue tends to forbid 
self-realization, for he who feels that he must renounce his 
life fears to realize it in either sense or intellect. Rigorism 
stands for restraint, and in the subordination of man to 
morality there is no opportunity for the individual to attain 
to selfhood; the will also is taught to exercise its functions 
in a negative fashion as though man should retreat from 
nature instead of overcoming her by knowledge and taste, 
by virtue and worship. Knowledge is subordinated to the 
ethical will, art is employed as a moral discipline, while 
religion has no other office than furthering the demands 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 269 

of virtue. Altogether, the life of culture is set aside for 
the sake of obligation, and with the best of intentions trie 
aims of humanity are constantly thwarted. Like eudaemo- 
nism, rigorism represents a living element in human nature, 
a trait reappearing in the race from time to time in greater 
or less degree. When it is subordinated to the constant 
striving of humanity toward its own goal, and is further 
viewed as a means to an end, it may find an acceptable place 
in a just view of human life. Hence, when finally we come 
to the major morality of Humanism, we shall find it im- 
possible to postulate a triumph of humanity over its ideals 
both of moderation and renunciation; and in this condition 
of victorious humanity selfhood will find its proper place. 



VII 

THE EFFECT OF CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS— 
THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

As naturism with all the ramification of its paths finally 
led to a sense of value which man receives from the world, 
so characteristic ethics evinces the dignity of man in his 
capacity of a moral character distinct from nature. It does 
not follow from this that the categories of value and dignity 
are fully elaborated by this view of life according to nature 
and reason respectively, but the general sense of life as 
worth while and worthy seems to follow from the arguments 
employed by these traditional schools of ethics. When man 
responds to conscience and rectitude, when he is alive to 
freedom and duty, he shows how dignified his life may 
become, for he now perfects his life in reason as his feeling 
of value leads him to perfect his life in sense. And just as 
pleasure and desire, utility and eudaemonia were in an in- 
clusive notion of value, so the four concepts of characteris- 
tic ethics are to be subsumed under the category of human 
dignity. The restraint of sense in conscience and the res- 
ponse of reason in duty are deciduous and thus lead to an 
ideal beyond their borders in the form of a unified life in 
the complete order of humanity. 

In adition to this general result of characteristic morality 
certain special elements are noteworthy. The service of 
idealistic ethics has already been recognized in our introduc- 
tion to this second view of the life-problem, and the review 
of characteristic morality, as it now lies before us, serves to 
fortify the impression that this method was the only one 
which could evince the independent nature of ethics and 
reveal the worth of common morality. Again we can be 
thankful that we were not left to the ideal-less principle 
of naturism, with its mere sensitivity to pleasure and its 
desire for immediate well-being, and praise is due to in- 

270 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 271 

tuitionism because it has revealed the possibility of an im- 
perceptible principle unknown to the eudaemonist in his 
world of immediacy. The service of intuitionism in ethics 
is very like that of rationalism in Baumgarten's aesthetics, 
where our modern science of beauty was emancipated from 
tradition and established in a systematic way unknown even 
to classicism and the Renaissance. Characteristic ethics 
has had a similar effect upon moral consciousness and no 
matter how far we depart from its ideals we cannot deny 
that its formal value is beyond dispute, for there is nothing 
indefinite about conscience and rectitude, duty and obliga- 
tion. 

The plan of characteristic morality revealed a two-fold 
form consisting of ( 1 ) an intellectualistic sense of conscience 
and rectitude, and (2) a volitional principle of freedom and 
duty. As we received these doctrines they seemed to be 
unintelligible in themselves and filled with paradox, until 
we surveyed them as indications of the single striving prin- 
ciple of humanity in its progress from nature to spirit. Then 
it appears that man's moral sensitivity and spontaneity are 
not false, but genuine, although it does not follow from 
this that they indicate the final element in human life. Our 
human striving is disclosed first of all in pleasure, and is 
seen again upon a higher plane as a desire for self-approval ; 
thus both the paradox of pleasure and the problem of con- 
science are involved in man's striving with self, where first 
nature and then reason is uppermost. Among our impulses 
the same principle of striving asserts itself and where it first 
assumes the form of desire actuated from within by the 
spontaneous volitions of consciousness, it reappears as the 
detent of duty which turns against nature instead of striv- 
ing toward it. A final glance at the roots of characteristic 
ethics will show how conscience and rectitude, freedom and 
duty, are animated by one central principle of human self- 
assertion. 

I— INTUITIONISM AND LIFE 

Presented in their usual form as ideals of characteris- 
tic morality, the principles of intuitionism represent but 
half-truths, whose completeness is to be fcund in a view 



272 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

of life which does not depend upon the inner diremption 
of humanity, but postulates the unity of spiritual life. 
Characteristic ethics has more interest in morality than in 
humanity, and it perfects its science at the expense of life. 
The case of conscience shows how intuitionism is willing 
to destroy the unity of mind for the sake of demonstrating 
its point concerning an inviolable sense of right and wrong. 
All other phases of man's consciousness are left to them- 
selves and are even debased in order that the sanctity of 
conscience may appear in clearer outline. Unfortunately 
for the intuitional prejudice, conscience is not permitted to 
enjoy such mental seclusion, but must take its place among 
the other semi-infallible elements of consciousness. A 
proper and more defensible view of conscience abandons the 
notion of ex cathedra utterances made by this favorite 
faculty of Protestantism, and relegates our human sense of 
approval and disapproval to the general course of mental 
judgments concerning truth, beauty, reality and value. In- 
deed, the true authority of conscience consists, not in some 
unnatural voice coming from an unwonted quarter, but in 
the general tenor of our total consciousness as this invests 
us with selfhood and informs us of our human worldhood 
in the realm of persons. 

The artificial view of human rectitude comes in for its 
share of criticism and must undergo the same correction. 
An autonomous judgment of right may safe-guard the in- 
terests of characteristic morality, but it does so at the ex- 
pense of logical consistency. Our own examination of 
autonomy was carried on with the hope of finding some ac- 
ceptable form of ethical judgment, for we believed that 
humanity cannot content itself with the mere felt approval 
and disapproval of an inner sense. But the narrowness of 
intuitionism, forbidding as it does any idea of human in- 
terest, renders the ethical judgment fallacious, since it con- 
sists in a circular form of argument. There are judgments 
of rectitude but they do not assume the analytical form of 
"right is right", but avoid the circle and assume a synthetic 
character by regarding the judgment humanistically as a 
relation between man and his ideals. Intuitionism does 
not happen to fall into this fallacy, but its very principles 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 273 

are such as to make it unavoidable, and the bad psychology 
of an isolated conscience adds to it a bad logic of the vicious 
circle. Escape from this will be found in a living judg- 
ment of virtue according to the norms of actual life in 
humanity. 

On its volitional side, characteristic ethics was unable 
to defend freedom, just as it found no consistent way to 
apply the ideal of liberty to life. Intuitionism could not 
refrain from taunting the preliminary system of naturistic 
ethics by contending that causality was rendered where 
freedom was en evidence. Thus it set man's will against 
his understanding, and made him doubt causality in order 
to believe freedom. A more temperate view seeks to 
establish something more than the punctual freedom of the 
individual, with its provoking attempts to pierce the fabric 
of outer causality, for it finds living liberty as the construc- 
tive principle in a world of humanity above that of nature. 
Such freedom is worth seeking in theory and in life, for it 
adapts itself to the ideal of morals that humanity is incul- 
cating. Intuitional liberty is not used fairly in the ethical 
system that seeks to deduce it, since it is at once turned into 
law where the yoke of nature becomes the yoke of nature- 
like reason. No greater burden than that of freedom has 
the human mind known; antique fate and modern deter- 
minism have been kind in comparison with the law of liberty 
which rigorously demands renunciation, and tries to crush 
all interest out of life for the sake of a nameless and pur- 
poseless law. 

Upon such a basis, intuitionism erected the ideal of duty 
as far removed from humanity as its counterpart, freedom. 
As a result there appeared a paradox insurmountable upon 
a rationalistic basis. If duty indicates the supreme consider- 
ation in human life, it should connect itself with some 
living interest, but according to characteristic ethics man 
must perform duty because it is duty, and his satisfaction 
consists in knowing that he has done the act for the sake 
of duty. We need not deny that in many instances, when 
the way from some immediate act to the total purpose of 
life does not appear, the practical man of action must pur- 
sue the path of duty as such, with the hope that it will trace 



274 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

its way through the labyrinth of life to its destined goal. 
The sense of our existence is not recognized in our average 
life, but only in isolated crises, and hence the intuitionist 
has been able to defend an imperative principle of action 
because our human striving must go on even when its pur- 
pose is not clear. Indeed, even to-day the real sense of 
living is neither clearly conceived nor faithfully presented 
to our wills, and yet life must proceed. Yet such an appeal 
is directed toward our ignorance and the animality of our 
history, when a faithful philosophy of life should aspire 
toward knowledge and the humanity of man, and conduct 
the moral argument according to the analogy of some goal. 
If duty is so imperative it must be because the issues of life 
are so urgent, but duty as developed in intuitionism can 
never tell us of anything beyond itself, and its devotee feels 
that he should participate in the values of that life for 
which he makes such sacrifices. 

The principle of renunciation is made upon a similar 
basis and is similarly unable to assume control over human 
life. In a certain sense the kipd of renunciation called for 
by rigorism is not genuine, since the rationalistic principles 
of the school leave nothing to be renounced. Having re- 
pudiated desire, so that it could not be made a consideration 
in human existence, regorism cannot justly urge the renun- 
ciation of something that does not exist. Of this paradox 
our modern Puritanism is guilty when it starts out in 
systematic opposition to sense and taste and then calls for 
self-denial from a self without sufficient content to make 
the denial genuine or valuable. What can be renounced 
after one has done his duty or obeyed the categorical im- 
perative? What can the rigorist renounce, when, clad in 
camel's hair cloak and feeding upon locusts and wild honey, 
he stands alone in the desert? If it be valid, renunciation 
must have some appreciable content for its exercise. 

The thoroughgoing formalism of characteristic ethics 
may now be recognized as the cause of these dilemmas. On 
the intellectual side, the origin of conscience and the ground 
of rectitude are without explanation, in characteristic ethics, 
which, from the volitional standpoint, has no justification 
for freedom or duty. Yet when these principles are related 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 275 

to the unitary sense of human striving they become intelligi- 
ble and influential. There is a human reason for conscience, 
just as there is a ground for rectitude, while freedom and 
duty have a place in $he life that ascends from nature to 
spirit. In the same way, there is room for renunciation in 
such a course of life, although it does not follow that man 
should renounce himself altogether for the sake of an 
abstraction. Hence another glance at the principles of in- 
tuitionism will show how simple they seem when surveyed 
in the light of man's whole life. The ideals of right because 
of right, duty for the sake of duty, are empty and mislead- 
ing, just as mere renunciation is an unreasonable demand. 
When our living humanity asserts its claims, it will be time 
enough for such severe methods. 

2. SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF CHARACTERISTIC ETHICS 

In addition to the artificial form of characteristic ethics 
there arise certain special problems in connection with its 
categories of rectitude and duty, as these have behind them 
the mental functions of conscience and freedom. Intui- 
tionism has had the good fortune to put ethical science in 
the proper light and has been equally happy in detaching its 
ideas from the confused mass of moral experiences. But 
with statement its work has practically ceased and the solu- 
tion of the problems proposed is to be sought elsewhere. 
Our examination of intuitional ideals and maxims kept 
showing how inevitable are the obstructions rising in the 
path of a purely formal system, just as it pointed out the 
way to a natural view of life whose point of departure was 
man's position in the world of sense-spirit, whose motive 
consisted in his free striving after selfhood. Then con- 
science began to reveal its source and rectitude its ground, 
while freedom showed how humanity emancipated itself 
from nature to undertake the responsibilities of spiritual life 
in the form of duty. Thus viewed, the problems of charac- 
teristic ethics become less and less opaque. 



276 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

a CONSCIENCE AS CONFLICT WITH HUMANITY 

The tragic way in which the individual, who blindly 
feels that he is all of humanity, is opposed by the totality 
of human striving, was discussed when we looked at the 
first phase of characteristic morality. Here it remains only 
to be pointed out how the idea of humanity conditions this 
internal conflict. Cleared of its habitual mystery, the com- 
punction of conscience seems to arise when the naturistic 
individual wilfully opposes the interests of the human 
world — whole, and in the total sense of human striving this 
common ill of human life is none other than the naturistic 
conflict of ego and the social non-ego. When is the remorse 
of conscience more keen, more characteristic than when 
the blind ego opposes his petty interest to the well-being 
of the world of humanity? Man, whether we survey him 
in the light of either naturistic or characteristic ethics, can 
do nothing but help or hinder humanity, and his virtue or 
his vice comes for the same primitive treatment at the bar 
of a conscience which, in its fidelity to humanity, is partial 
to no minor school of morals. To represent conscience as 
the voice of something alien to humanity is eccentric and 
misleading. 

The inner sense of compunction is secluded from every 
explanation save that of a wounded selfhood, for that which 
injured the person wronged grieves also the self. Human 
restraint, which suffers one not to feel anger unjustly, is 
evidently securing man against the reaction of his humanity 
upon himself; just as it inhibits resentment, even when this 
may be just, that all forms of hatred may be removed from 
the soul. To the individual who sees in the self nothing 
but an ego, conscience can only assume the guise of mystery 
and make its appeal as an alien authority; but when the 
sense of selfhood is more fully realized, the feeling of ap- 
proval and disapproval is touched with human warmth and 
assumes a personal form, so that he who has been the ag- 
pressor feels grieved with himself, now that his humanity is 
contrasted with his egoism. Let it not be suggested that 
conscientiousness, in its desire to relieve the individual from 
any possible remorse that may arise, is thus only another 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 277 

form of selfishness; for the "self" here involved is the 
world-self of the human order, or the intelligible ego, whose 
interests are not petty and personal, but universal in their 
significance. Only by being alive to remorse and fearful 
of resentment may one attain to the inner worldhood of his 
life and realize himself as human. But the theory which 
makes conscience an arbitrary dictator, who inflicts punish- 
ment as a warning against future offenses, is as far removed 
from the humanity of conscience as is the hedonist who looks 
for freedom from pain without asking how pain is likely 
arise. 

b THE FALLACY OF RECTITUDE AND ITS HUMANISTIC 

CORRECTION 

From its own standpoint, characteristic morality cannot 
present the problem of rectitude in any other than a para- 
doxical form. This unhappy condition of affairs is involved 
in the very idea of autonomy with its circular form of 
argumentation, while the moral judgment expressed is 
never anything but an analytical one. Rectitude thus 
dwells in a hopeless moral seclusion whence it cannot issue 
and take its place in the actual life of pleasure, pain and 
desire; it transfixes humanity upon a relentless ideal and 
becomes a fixation-point in the consciousness of the living, 
striving individual. Right is right, but while nothing less, 
it is nothing more. But man is man, and he keeps his 
humanity in the midst of his ideals. Now the human heart 
never put forth the principle of autonomy with its doubtful 
metaphysical value and narrowness of logical range. Hu- 
manity can and does make humanity an end, but this is not 
equivalent to saying that right is right because it is right; 
man can set up virtue and aim at it so perfectly that we are 
able to see how necessary to him are his ideals; but in so 
doing he surrenders himself to a principle of spiritual life 
and not to an analytical judgment. 

Hesitant as was characteristic morality to invest the right 
with any appreciable contents, the fact remains that this 
view of life tended to inculcate the disinterested in man. 
In pursuit of his intuitions, he was led to forego narrow 



278 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

egoism and consider the beauty of the ideal. The claims 
of humanism did not fail to voice themselves even in the 
attenuated form of idealism, for he who had learned to 
revere the ideal because of its non-naturistic content, could 
be taught to love the law when its humanistic value was 
pointed out. When it appears that the will of the world 
is such that we shall learn to abandon material interests for 
spiritual ones, we see why we were so sensitive to con- 
science, so responsive to duty, so rapt in our contemplation 
of the ethically "right." Rectitude does not consist of a 
mere rule whose counterpart might be found in some 
mechanical law, but it contains the rule in the natural way 
that the manifold of natural phenomena represent a tew 
general principles. Or, to vary the illustration, rectitude 
indicates a law not unlike those of aethetics whose intui- 
tions combine a universal form wiith a living content. 
Neither nature nor art makes use of abstractions, and ethics 
can come near to the life of humanity if it seeks the uni- 
versal and disinterested in human life. Where the aca- 
demic interests of theory are lost sight of, it can be seen that 
living individuals who are bent on conduct cleave to virtue 
because of its inherent worth, and their "autonomy" is only 
the lofty appreciation of what is noble. Such rectitude is 
beyond the reach of characteristic ethics, for it carries one 
over into the precinct of humanity. 

C THE WORLD OF FREEDOM AND FREE WILL 

Freedom is no special prerogative belonging to some 
particular activity of consciousness, but is the very essence 
of all human striving. When, therefore, a system of ethics 
seeks to demonstrate some supposed sense of liberty apart 
from the total activity of the soul, it prejudices the case 
against freedom and further weakens its arguments by 
assuming that such freedom exists for the sake of rigorism, 
but does not exist on behalf of hedonism. Genuine free- 
dom, however, concerns itself with something more than a 
duty-doing will; it is active in connection with desire and 
belongs indeed to the fullness of human positing. We need 
not assume the broad view of Schopenhauer, when he re- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 279 

duces all forms of activity to the will in the world, to see 
that volition is as vast as humanity. Our point of view, 
therefore, leaves us midway between Kant and Schopen- 
hauer, inasmuch as we advance beyond the narrow rationalism 
of the one and yet do not proceed to the vague naturism 
of the other; hereby, we are able to make freedom humanis- 
tic and can express the inner meaning of the world of hu- 
manity by styling its inner activities the world of freedom. 
Only in humanity does such a freedom become manifest to 
consciousness, for only in humanity is this freedom found. 

From the ambiguous position that man occupies between 
two world-orders it follows that neither determinism nor 
libertarianism can be true. Determinism seeks to sur- 
render man to the realm of physical causality and thus treat 
him in the light of thinghood rather than spirithood. Lib- 
ertarianism reverses this process and where its antagonist 
seeks to submerge man . in nature, it endeavors to 
lift him out of sense into the airless order of pure reason. 
Now man is neither animal nor angel, but human; his 
world is neither nature nor spirit, but the atmospheric realm 
of humanity. Hence human freedom is a genuine product 
of human striving independent of physical causality and the 
supposed equilibrium of rational forces in consciousness. 
Determinism need not seek to forbid man's entrance into 
pure reason since his humanity does not lead him there; 
libertarianism need not fear that man may sink into mere 
sense, for his human vocation prevents such a disaster. 
Freedom exists and needs only to be perfected by man him- 
self in his strategic position in the one world which to him 
now looks like two alien orders of matter and mind, of 
sense and spirit, of nature and culture. 

d IMPERATIVE DUTY AS HUMAN STRIVING 

There is something sepulchral in the hollow voice of 
duty crying, "Thou shalt!" No ethical theory can abide* 
by such, an impersonal utterance which calls upon man to 
surrender all to the ideal without indicating any response 
on the part of the world. To demand that man shall yield 
all, and to promise him nothing in return is a paradox the 



28o VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

parallel of the hedonic are, where man pursues an ever- 
eluding pleasure. Now the apparent significance of duty, 
which does not reveal itself so long as the rationalistic side 
of life is under scrutiny, is found to consist in the total 
order of human existence wherein the ideal of perfect hu- 
manity is uppermost. It is from the abyss of humanity 
that the voice of duty comes, and when man has once found 
his center and is conscious of the purpose of his life, the 
veil is done away with in humanity and the imperative 
character of the good appears as none other than the endless 
striving of humanity with nature. It is this universal im- 
pulse which invades the private heart where in its isolation 
it appears as a nameless obligation. Humanity is deter- 
mined to assert itself and there is needed no better proof of 
this than the consciousness of duty. Only by such an ap- 
peal to the universal will of humanity are we able to ac- 
count for the strength and the durability of the moral pas- 
sion. Where man seems to set up nothing as the goal of his 
endeavor, and where in practice he carries on renunciation, 
as one who hates his life, he is really submitting to and 
furthering the plan which humanity has set for his realiza- 
tion. 

In the blindness with which duty asserts itself, we have 
an example parallel to that of desire which continues to hold 
man to nature even when the impossibility of hedonism has 
been pointed out. Still he hopes, still he strives, all because, 
whether as desire or duty, the one longing for 
humanity lures him on to something he has not 
yet achieved. In the presence of this overwhelming ten- 
dency to be human, as it shows itself in knowledge and 
action, in culture and civilization, hedonic and rigoristic 
passions are lost to view, and the validity and force which 
they do have is due to their participation in the ceaseless 
stream of life. Where in the spirit of optimism, desire 
deludes man with the idea that nature can satisfy his striv- 
ing, duty makes use of a pessimistic principle and, by counsel- 
ling man to renounce all inclination, all desire for conse- 
quence, persuades him to follow abstract duty as though that 
alone were safe. With the interests of spiritual humanity so 
threatened by naturistic tendencies, there is a certain 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 281 

cogency in the rigoristic argument which urges man to 
yield to the ideal, even though the theory does not invest 
this with any content. When humanism appears, it finds 
the ground of naturism already broken, and where man has 
learned to obey law because it is law, and to follow duty 
because it is duty, he can further be taught to strive for a 
perfect humanity whose content is constantly enriching itself 
as history advances. 

3 — ESCAPE FROM RIGORISM THROUGH HUMAN DIGNITY 

Like eudaemonism, rigorism is indicative of the general 
view of the theory that proposes it. One seeks to relate 
man as such to the world of nature, where the other en- 
deavors to adopt him to the ideal. Particular views of 
pleasure and conscience, desire and duty, are lost sight of in 
these more philosophical adjustments of man to the approved 
order of his being. For this reason, the question is one of 
sufficiency rather than of demonstration. Eudaemonism 
does not succeed in restoring man to his unity with nature, 
while rigorism fails to raise him to the ideal of spirit. The 
principle of renuncio overlooks the genuine humanity of 
mankind, for its ideals were not to be revealed to flesh and 
blood, but to some imaginary kind of men who do not de- 
sire to know or to feel. Where our own view of life keeps 
calling to our attention the constant striving of humanity 
to reach some half-guessed goal, we find it impossible to 
believe that this effort could be kept up under the auspices 
of a rigorism which negates everything but the barren law 
of obligation, and thus leaves no place for human interests 
and human methods. We are called upon to live and to be 
human, before we are called upon to obey the rationalistic 
law of duty. 

Life is destined to triumph over its ideals, so that hu- 
manity rises above renunciation and asserts itself positively. 
Rigorism cannot be justly criticised from the eudaemonistic 
standpoint because its ideals are not likely to yield happiness 
to men, for they were not expected to do this. Where the 
critical view is not some particular theory, but the life of 
man itself, it becomes possible to remove renunciation from 



282 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the supreme position of judge by saying that its judgments 
are not in accordance with humanity and that its principles 
carried out consistently would only defeat the ends of 
human existence. Rigorism assumes that it is opposing 
nature for the sake of the ideal, but in reality it is directed 
against culture, so that one of the most critical problems 
that will soon arise in our view of humanistic ethics will be 
that of conduct versus culture, wherein our Semitic prin- 
ciple of conscience arises to rebuke our Aryan joy of in- 
tellectual life and its perfection. One need only to recall 
the deep-seated antipathy toward the human understanding 
that the categorical imperative displayed, to see how blindly 
the human mind may renounce, not only sense, but also 
reason, and then having closed the path from knowledge to 
reality seek another, leading from what ought to be to what 
is. We must renounce truth in order to secure goodness, 
or as the truth-hating words of Kant expressed it, "I had 
to destroy knowledge in order to make room for faith." 
(Critique of Pure Reason, Pref. 2nd. ed.) Such an attack 
upon intellectual life gives one courage to repudiate his 
renunciation and continue to rely upon a mind which may 
have its root in sense, where man's own life begins, but 
grows into intellect which participates in the world of 
spirit. There are some things we cannot renounce, and if 
we yield our immediate interests of sense we will keep our 
ultimate interests of reason. Meanwhile, knowledge re- 
fuses to be destroyed. 

Whatever man does or suffers must be in keeping with 
his human dignity as a human being, so that ethics seems 
to stand in need of some substitute for renunciation. This 
cannot be found until the conditions of human dignity have 
been laid down in a manner consonant with man's ethical 
program. Characteristic ethics has given us a starting- 
point, and we must begin where that theory ends. The full 
problem of human life, however, is not to be discussed under 
the head of dignity alone, for naturistic ethics has been 
equally successful in deducing a moral category, that of 
value. For this reason, humanistic ethics will be seen to 
have two poles in the value and dignity of human life. 

In order to save our sense of human responsibility, we 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 283 

must find some substitute for the categorical imperative. 
Our age is characterized by an inner freedom which toler- 
ates no artificial restraints from laws which seem all too 
human, so that he whc^ would rescue responsibility must 
rescue it from "duty." Not only Nora in "A Doll's House" 
has her fling at duty, but the exaltee everywhere is looking 
toward the "higher law." This Anatole France's Therese 
says, "Yes, morality, duty, I know. But how hard to dis- 
cover what is duty. I assure you that for three quarters of 
my time I do not know where duty lies. It is like the 
hedgehog that belonged to our English governess at Join- 
ville; we used to spend the whole evening looking for it 
under the furniture ; and when we found it, it was time to go 
to bed." (The Red Lily, tr. Stephens, II). 



PART FOUR 
HUMANISTIC ETHICS 



I 

MAJOR AND MINOR MORALITY 

I THE LIFE OF HUMANITY IN SPIRIT 

The general proposition that has guided our discussion 
of man's career in the world asserts that life consists in the 
ceaseless striving of spiritual humanity with material nature, 
as also in the creation of an independent order of being. 
The origin, development and culmination of this striving 
were surveyed in the first part of this work, when we were 
seeking to portray the problems of life. From this uni- 
versal view of humanity we were forced to turn aside to 
examine into the claims of naturism, with its principle of 
immediate feeling, and of characteristic ethics, with its ideal 
of an ultimate rectitude demanding the renunciation of life 
in the world of sense. We have seen what these two 
theories accomplish for a philosophy of life, and have noted 
wherein they failed to lead man to the goal of his existence. 
At the same time we have tried to show how the pursuit of 
pleasure and the desire for happiness, as well as the con- 
straint of conscience and the free renunciation of life itself, 
present phenomena so self-contradictory that neither naturis- 
tic nor characteristic ethics can account for them, so that 
we must resort to a larger conception of man's human prob- 
lem in order to see how inevitable are such things as the 
paradox of pleasure and the aimlessness of desire, the 
mystery of conscience and the contradiction of duty. These 
common enemies of our traditional ethical views, as well as 
others like egoism and altruism, freedom and fate, autonomy 
and heteronomy, have been subsumed, we hope, under the 
general proposition that humanity strives onward toward 
self-realization. 

Finally, the idea of human life as such is to have a 
hearing; and humanity, no longer as a standard for judging 

287 



288 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

other views, but as a system, may now be surveyed for its 
own sake. Part Four of our work thus begins where Part 
One concluded, while the criticism of conventional systems 
as taken up in Part Two and Part Three has only rein- 
forced our conviction that humanity in itself, apart from 
pleasure and rectitude, or desire and duty, contains a life 
that is worthy of thinking and living. In carrying on such 
an examination of human striving, we do not assume that 
man will live without desires or duties, nor do we seek in 
any other way to set aside those general notions of the posi- 
tive and negative forms of life suggested by the two 
theories; we desire only that ethics abandon these eccen- 
tric positions and seek the center of life in humanity itself, 
leaving the principles of eudaemonia and renunciation to 
find subordinate positions. Such an attempt to systematize 
our humanity is no simple task to be accomplished in a word 
or two; new moral categories must be found to contain the 
idea of a living, striving humanity which can no longer be 
subsumed under a plastic good or a dynamic duty; new 
ideals must be created to guide the activities of the emanci- 
pated human spirit which no longer surrenders to virtue and 
conscience; and everywhere the heritage of former systems 
must be adjusted to the needs of a new ethical age. In 
pursuing such investigations, we shall be guided by our 
original point of view, according to which the human 
creature proceeded to withdraw from external nature and 
elaborate an inner life of character in the world of human- 
ity. To realize this ideal, our ethical system must survey 
humanity in the inness and totality of its nature; then the 
proper categories as well as sufficient methods will appear. 
The ethical systems that have been under scrutiny have not 
surveyed man in accordance with his position in the universe ; 
hedonism has put him in nature, intuitionism has taken him 
from it abruptly, while his exact condition is one of a pass- 
ing through or leaving behind him the natural order whence 
his existence was derived; hence the human coloring in life. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 289 

2 HUMANITY AS A SYSTEM 

Our view of man's moral life has sought to survey the 
ethical problem in its totality, although it has not failed to 
observe how particular ethical systems tend to formulate 
and characterize the question of life. In this way arises a 
two-fold view of conduct, one phase of which exhibits a 
major morality whose premises are found in the universal 
conditions of life, and a minor morality content to arrange 
the details of conduct for the time. Major morality in- 
volves the position that man occupies in the world as a 
whole and assumes to know something about the sense of 
living; it does not isolate man and seek to order his conduct 
as to so many acts here and there, but surveys him in his 
proper setting of humanity with the aim of interpreting his 
ethical vocation. As a result it tends to express the inner 
nature of man and the totality of his existence, while the 
moral conception of being, instead of being something ex- 
ceptional, appears in natural adjustment to the rest of his 
spiritual functions. In other words, major morality re- 
fuses to assume an eccentric position in man and proceeds 
at once to the center of his being; ethics then becomes a 
phase of man's life but not the whole of it, and humanity 
rises above its ideal. 

The unsystematic view of humanity that made man con- 
sist of either feeling or will resulted in the production of a 
minor morality. In itself, such a plan may have its place 
in the life of a creature who asks, "What ought I to do?", 
but this point of personal interest in the moral order does 
not justify the philosopher in assuming that his practical 
rule of action should become the constructive maxim of the 
whole universe. Minor morality proceeds in ignorance of 
the nature of action and assumes that the "free moral agent" 
can perform a deed with his will alone. Already we have 
seen how pleasure fails to account for the activities of man 
and the same may be said of abstract virtue. Man needs 
more than conduct to achieve his humanity and the moralis- 
tic view of life is in no wise calculated to evince man's self- 
hood and worldhood. For this reason, major morality finds 
it necessary to depart from the morality of doing duty and 



290 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

satisfying desire, for a form of life which springs from the 
center of man's nature and expands over the totality of his 
being. 

What is wanting in the minor morality is a systematic 
treatment of the life-problem; this found and furthered, we 
realize that the world is aiming to produce, not moralists, 
but men. According to the plan which has guided the in- 
troductory and critical parts of this work, life receives its 
meaning as well as its momentum from the world in which 
man finds himself, while the moral life is a means, or form 
of conduct, involved in the perfection of humanity. Where 
minor morality fails is in its inability to recognize its own 
position, as something secondary and preparatory to life-in- 
itself, as a means and not an end. Life exists for life's 
sake ; morality is called into being for the purpose of further- 
ing human existence. Moralistic thinking and living 
dwindles and fails, because they refuse to participate in the 
one world-movement of man from nature to humanity; be- 
cause they find no logical place in the history of human cul- 
ture. The larger ethics, however, is never ignorant of or 
inimical to the total problem of life, and it is with appro- 
priate language that Plato, Spinoza and Schopenhauer des- 
cribe the supremacy of the moral ideal. They do not take 
morality for granted, but derive it from the totality of the 
ontological order. 

The ethical is a part of man's life but not the all-engross- 
ing consideration; with it other methods of life may well 
be compared, to it none can be subordinated. Rights is 
below the moral plane as religion is above it, while politics 
and arts are similarly adjustable to the ethical zone of 
human consciousness. There is a form of living which is 
infra-moral where man dwells in nature, and there is an- 
other stage of being where man is supra-moral in the art 
and religion of his humanity. These victorious forms of 
culture give us leave to live, and, freed from the labor of 
desire and the drudgery of duty, we begin to breathe our 
proper atmosphere. As art delivers man from the thral- 
dom of sense and turns pleasure from passion into sentiment, 
so religion transforms conscience and its sting into holy, 
equanimity and suffers man to be himself. Man thus 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 291 

triumphs over the outer conditions of his being where sense- 
percepts furnish so many given points of departure, just as 
he rises above the fixed ideas of the inner conditions where 
alien obligations are Md upon him. Minor morality sees 
only one form of life, and to the ethical it seeks to subordi- 
nate all taste, all truth, all worship. 

Minor morality has ever made the ethical life too simple. 
Man has ever been labeled "free moral agent"; he has been 
taught to "know himself" and to ask "What ought I to do?" 
Conscience has become fixed idea, rectitude frozen custom, 
and duty the one thing needful. Both moral hemispheres 
have been mapped out according to this simple view of man. 
Hedonism has been as insistent upon its calculus as the 
intuitionist his conscience; failing to observe the possibilities 
of the individual in egoism, it has ever called benevolence 
right and self-realization wrong. Humanity and indivi- 
duality, art and religion, have been lost to this simplified 
statement of minor morality, and where the absolutism of 
the one found something immutable in rectitude, the rela- 
tivism of the other was none the less devoted to the acquired 
piety of long practiced virtues. The failure was the failure 
to survey man in his humanistic atmosphere; the result was 
felt when minor ethics found no way to account for progress 
and re-valuation. As a system it looked upon men as 
dwarfs and could neither explain their motives nor satisfy 
their desires. 

This common failure to find humanity is shown in the 
ideal which we can imagine the theorists to have elaborated. 
The "good" man hedonic has sought the largest sum of 
pleasures or the greatest good of the greatest number; or in 
the spirit of benevolence, he has surrendered private pleasure 
that another hedonist might have the enjoyment of it. What 
is the result? Certainly nothing heroic, nothing which can 
put the "good" man in the system of major morality. Sup- 
pose we consider the "good" man rigoristic, who has been 
so hedonically "bad" as to spurn pleasure and to pursue 
duty at the cost of happiness. His character is cramped, 
because it makes no room for culture; this "good" man is 
stupid in his severities, just as he is wanting in a sense of 
humanity and life's values. The usual method with ancient 



292 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Stoic and modern Protestant tends to make "bad" preferable 
to "good", for the latter quality lacks all suggestion of the 
heroic and histrionic. The stage could make no use of the 
man of desire or the man of duty, because the drama, which 
consists in relating the individual to some pregnant situa- 
tion, could never arouse enthusiasm over the entrance of 
the egoist into the social order, or the conflict between the 
rigorist and life according to nature. 

The predominance of the nature-ideal over the culture- 
ideal reveals a painful indifference to the one life problem. 
Hedonist and rigorist either despair of life or regard it 
non est disputandum, so busy are they with the manifold 
that they overlook the unity of life, and are easily lost among 
the details of a hedonic calcalus, or an array of virtuous 
virtues. Imagine the thinker pondering upon the problem? 
What is a man supposed to do? Can he receive light from 
a theory which tells him how to conserve his pleasure, or 
how to promote his virtue? Minor morality has ever been 
guilty of postponing the central issue for subordinate ques- 
tions, and its particular theories cannot stand for humanity. 
Spencer begins by accusing all other views of ignoring the 
"causal connection" between ethics and life, and ends by 
turning from "relative" to "absolute" morality, but his 
actual discussion of the ethical problem does not become 
such fine premise and postulate, for the evolutionist is over- 
come by naturistic hedonism which fails to locate humanity. 

Neither desire nor duty is final in human life; both are 
means to an end which is the culture of humanity. Let it 
not be protested that, as an ideal, duty is so remote, so 
ultimate, that man can never attain to it, much less exceed 
its demands, for the same may be said of desire, which is 
positive and concrete, where duty is negative and abstract. 
Man never performs his duty ; man never realizes his desires ; 
the argument under the category of the unattainable therefore 
is invalid. Humanity is beyond desire and duty; neverthe- 
less, it is so germane to man that it will be satisfying to him 
and be realized by him in a way unknown to naturistic aim 
and rationalistic duty. Man was not made for pleasure, 
else he had been only a creature of feeling; he was not made 
for duty, for then he were only a will ; but he was made for 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 293 

humanity which in its unity is beyond the comflict of desire 
and duty. The realization of humanity is the unum neces- 
sarium for man, who will ever be confronted with duty 
undone and desire unrealized. "Man is only completely 
man", said Schiller, — not when he indulges sense or obeys 
conscience but — "when he plays (Letters of Aesthetic 
Education). And by this amiable remark he seeks to point 
out the path to a perfect humanity which in its aesthetic unity 
is beyond both sense and understanding. Man is only man 
when he attains to the inner unity of his humanity; that is 
when the conflict between desire and duty, ego and alter, 
has subsided. It was the perception of this truth as a re- 
ligious principle that led Schleiermacher to look for certain 
prophetic mediators between mere man and infinite human- 
ity — Mittler zwischen dem eingeschrankten Menschen und 
der unendlichen Menscheit. (Reden uber Religion, I. S. 
10). Man is only man when his art and worship disclose 1 
the harmony of the world without and the endlessness of 
the same world within his soul, and it is the holy office 
of artists and religionists to arouse within human conscious- 
ness a sense of destiny which is lost to the minor moralist 
with his maxims. When this higher view of ethics is held, 
we shall cease to wonder whether art has or has not a moral 
function, for instead of measuring the free creations of 
genius according to the minor principles of desire and duty, 
we shall find for them a secure place in the major morality 
of a striving humanity. 

3 THE MINOR NATURE OF HEDONISM AND INTUITIONISM 

When the moral life is surveyed from an independent 
standpoint, it tends to show how the extremes of the schools 
meet after long and petty disagreement. As far back as 
the antique decadence, Stoic and Epicurean, like Herod and 
Pilate, made friends in the midst of their enmities and 
agreed upon a nihilistic life-ideal of ataraxy. Our own 
decadence has taught us similar lessons, and to-day our in- 
tuitionsts are ready for a mild form of hedonism in the guise 
of eudaemonism, while the utilitarian realizes that conscience 
and "common-sense morality" may sustain some relation to 



294 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the life of man. The apparent superiority of characteristic 
ethics may be attributed to the fact that it has ever been 
contrasted with the hedonic conception of life and not with 
life itself, and when once the august significance of inner 
humanity dawns upon the mind, the petty ideals of character- 
istic morality are lost sight of. Rigorism is not life, but 
rigor mortis, and according to the moral pedantry of its ad- 
vocates it is required to die dans les formes. It is an un- 
natural theory, and while it may seem superior to hedonism, 
the source of man's genuine moral life is found in the latter. 
Both hedonic and intuitional schools betray a lack of 
unity in their attempted adjustments of man to the world, 
which fact is probably due to their failure to view man in 
the light of his humanity. Hedonism, which is excessively 
naturistic, makes human desire strong but leaves conscience 
weak and ineffectual. Intuitionism has done much for the 
moral law, but its artificial rationalism has weakened man 
in strengthening duty. The disciple of rigorism is a 
creature of fear, he suffers from "bad conscience", and is 
incapable of adjusting himself to the world. Neither view 
of life is satisfactory, for neither considers the intrinsic 
quality of humanity. An excess of naturistc desire makes 
man heavy and dull, and the continued enjoyment of pleas- 
ure unfits him for the vocation of man in the world. On 
the other hand, the surplus of rationalistic duty paralyzes 
man's human efforts, since he despairs of ever obeying con- 
science or satisfying duty ; thus the yoke of obligation hinders 
his creative powers in the world of humanity. Morality is 
overdone in action but falls short in insight and consistency. 
The whole sense of living is ignored, and the creative nature 
of humanity is set aside for the sake of minor considerations 
called happiness and duty. Minor ethics, represented by 
our conventional theories, fails to relate man to the world, 
for it does not see that the problems of politics are not in- 
dependent of those of physics, or the idea of humanity in- 
different to that of nature. Hedonism, abandons man to 
nature as though he were only an animal; rigorism removes 
him from it altogether as though he were more than human. 
But man with his ever-enlarging humanity is destined for 
something different from a naturism or a rationalism, and a 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 295 

sense of his importance compels philosophy to abandon the 
narrow forms of minor morality for the human possibilities 
of a major morality. The essence of the larger morale con- 
sists in asserting the unity of man's spiritual nature as well 
as the totality of the human world-order. Minor ethics 
relates separate human faculties to isolated facts of either 
nature or reason. 

The explanation of the failure attending both hedonism 
and intuitionism is thus to be found in the eccentric position 
which they occupy in their view of life. They never place 
themselves in a position to appreciate the integrity of human 
existence, but content themselves by viewing conscience a e r 
faculty of the soul, and pleasure as a phase of life; mean- 
while life itself waits for just evaluation as to its character 
and world-significance. The best that either hedonism or 
rigorism can do is to explain isolated acts of the general 
run of mankind, where the individual is confronted by con- 
dition and not theory. Men do seek pleasures, men do per- 
form duties, but do such obvious statements of every-day 
facts throw a far-reaching light on the problem of life? The 
meaning of life appears most clearly in the exceptional and 
gifted individual, who is raised above the necessities of 
desire and duty, and is enabled in the full freedom of human- 
ity to perform a genuine deed. In the light of these sign- 
ificant performances, the major form of morality assumes a 
justly august form. What perfection of hedonism or rigor- 
ismcan explain the dialectical activity of Plato, the martial 
operations of Caesar, the piety of St. Francis, the genius of 
Raphael, the philosophical poetics of Goethe? Not one of 
these sons of men did his duty or gratified his desires; the 
several acts which they performed were above virtue and 
happiness. This aristocratic view of mankind may possibly 
be as fruitful as the vigorous democracy which seeks morality 
either in a primitive social contract, or in the greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number. Such a morality is of the 
minor sort, for it consists only of restraint, while major 
morality premises the self-affirmation of the soul as the one 
thing needful and valuable. 

In addition to this false centrism, our theories have ever 
clung to an unworthy and unintelligible naturism. The 



296 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

genuine life of man is a culture-condition acquired in the 
assertion of humanism. It was not only Hobbes who saw 
morality arise in connection with the status naturalis; practi- 
cally all hedonism deals with raw feelings of pleasure and 
pain, which under sufficient treatment flower in the beauti- 
ful and the sublime. The rigorist, in his perpetual hatred 
of pleasure, has been similarly dull to the possibilities of 
culture and has relegated duty to the service of a blind and 
uncouth will. Now, it is the culture-life, not the nature- 
life, which makes man, and morality should legislate for 
him a fronte rather than a tergo, that his superior nature, 
or his humanity, may be kept before the mind. Minor 
morality, as expressed by particular theories, has thus failed 
to conceive of the unity which exists in the life of culture. 
Naturalism and rationalism have been unwilling to approach 
reality; in ethics, they remain where Kant placed them: 
i. e., in the very midst of the phenomenal order. 

In their unfliching naturism, both systems have ignored 
the life of culture and in so far have fallen short of the 
ideal of humanity. The ancient who did not distinguish 
between individual and society was similarly naive in the 
presence of the difference between nature and culture. Our 
problem, however, is not the problem of plastic virtue or a 
formal good. Early in modern ethics the conflict between 
egoism and altruism was met, and how the problem is to 
find ultimate solution remains to be seen; this, however, is 
certain: that Hobbist egoism cannot express the moral situa- 
tion which necessarily includes the social factor. A second 
step remains to be taken: ethics must advance beyond na- 
ture, as it superseded the ego with society and is now in the 
midst of a prosaic socio-economic system. The claims of 
culture are equal to those of society; in fact, they are the 
same, since both relate to an overarching humanity. But 
the condition of ethics to-day, where naturism still holds the 
field, is as far from the ideal of humanity as it was in the 
days of Hobbes, who was no more biased in his doctrine of 
self-love than we are in our naturism. 

Thus far, the search for humanity, which has led thought 
away from a narrow egoism, has done little more than pro- 
duce a social ideal, which is either a political aggregate or 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 297 

a social organism. The inness of social life is as much in 
need of a prophet as was the soul before Augustine dis- 
covered the interior sense of mankind. True, we have 
Schiller who may stand in just this prophetic relation to 
the human world-order. He it was who showed us how* 
humanity consists, not of outer circumstance, but of inner 
conditions, and taught us to look for unity in men instead 
of diversity. Yet Schiller cannot overcome the moralistic 
prejudice implanted in him by Kant, for although in the 
essay on "Grace and Dignity" he places humanity above 
hedonic perfection of sense and rigoristic perfection of 
reason, his "Letters on Aesthetical Education" treat beauty 
as the play between sense and reason, and make art the 
most efficient means of turning a sensationalist into a moral- 
ist. 

Finally, it must be admitted that while both schools have 
developed only the minor ethics, they have culminated in 
characteristic forms of life-philosophy, that is, of major 
morality. This appears in the hedonic philosophy of eudae- 
monism and the intuitionist ideal of rigorism. From these 
we learn to ask whether life has value and man dignity, 
because our attention is called to the question concerning 
man's position in the universe and the total significance of 
his life. Hence, where hedonism is minor, eudaemonism is 
major, and where intuitionism is of the lower order, rigorism 
assumes a position in the higher one. In other words, when 
a thinker discusses the "arithmetic of pleasure" he is a minor 
moralist; but when he asks whether man should have im- 
mediate or remote interests he becomes a major moralist. 
As to intuitionism, if the philosopher is anxious to know 
whether conscience can err, his is a minor position; when 
he would inquire whether man should affirm or deny himseli 
in the world, he suddenly assumes the role of major moral 
prophet. In one case he discusses mere conduct of the punc- 
tual will, in the other he views the moral vocation of the 
free human spirit. The following table will serve to show 
how this classification affects our ethical thinkers: 



298 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 



Major Moralists 

Plato, whose ethics is 
based upon a system 
of physics and poli- 
tics. 

Aristotle; his ideal of 
moderation is a part 
of his philosophical 
energism. 

Hobbes; like Plato, he 
finds ethics in the 
physico-political. 

Spinoza; unrelated to the 
modern controversy, 
he creates a major 
morale. 

Shaf tsbury ; whose com- 
monplace views are 
related to a system 
of life. 

Hume; his theory of 
"custom" unites the 
speculative and the 
practical. 

Schopenhauer; he follows 
with the consistency 
the Will-to-live. 

Spencer, who does not 
miss the "causal con- 
nection" of conduct. 

Nietzsche, who while 
mentally blind was able 
to see "beyond good 
and evil." 



Minor Moralists 

Socrates, who repudiates 
the physical for the 
ethical. 

The Stoics, who rush 
unprepared to mere 
conduct. 
The Epicureans, who do 
the same from an- 
other view-point. 

Cudworth-Clarke : their 
antipathy to Hobbes 
warps their views. 

Butler, whose noble sys- 
tem of self-love and 
conscience just misses 
systematization. 

Price, a mere "intuition- 
ist." 

Hutcheson: his humanis- 
tic standard suggests 
major morality. 

Adam Smith; his quest 
of the origin blinds 
him to the ground of 
morality. 

Kant; like Socrates he 
surrenders his ideal 
of knowledge to the 
moralistic. 

Intuitionist and Hedon- 
ist; eager to defend 
doctrines they fail to 
survey the moral life 
of humanity. 



Both hedonism and intuitionism break through their trad- 
itional borders when they lead naturistic and characteristic 
ethics to the major forms of eudaemonism and rigorism. 
Major morality does not seek to set either of these views at 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 299 

naught, nor does it pit one against the other; it strives to 
arrange them in the order of lower and higher, according 
to which one becomes an introductory, the other an inter- 
mediate, form of humanistic ethics. To reach full human- 
ity, ethics must increase the quantity of these staid views 
and thus raise them from the petty prudential and legalistic 
notions of life to a view consonant with the world of in- 
terior existence. The contrast between the major and minor 
formulations of the life-doctrine appears in a new form, 
when one catalogues side by side such maxims as may be 
conceived as serving in the larger and lesser aspects of hu- 
man conduct. Both the hedonic and intuitional theories of 
ethics will be found to fall into the class of minor morals 
while the contrary ideals of self-assertion and self-abnegation 
repose among the major maxims. 



Major Morals 
Do what thou wilst — 

Fay ce que vouldras. 

(Rabelais.) 
Will thyself. 
Slay thyself — Sterbe und 

werde. ( Goethe. ) 
Live for the ideal. 
Be thyself. 

Postulate life. 
Work the works of con- 
templation. 

Do nothing. (Taoism.) 

Assert, or deny, the Will- 
to-Live. (Schopen- 
hauer. ) 

Renounce. 

Will the Will-to-Sufier. 
( Neitzsche. ) 



• Minor Morals. 
Do thy duty. 



Live for others. 
Seek pleasure. 

Live according to law. 

Seek the greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest 
number. 

Always choose the right. 

Promote the health of the 
social organism. ( Steph- 
en.) 

Act, act, act. 

Be good. 

Obey. 

Be good and be happy. 



300 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Major Morals Minor Morals 

Acquiesce, and will the Act as if the maxim of 

world as a whole. thy action were to be- 

come by thy will a un- 
iversal law of nature. 
(Kant.) 

The major maxims incite man to work from within as 
in a world of humanity, his merit consisting in the ability to 
improvise rather than to follow the score of another. Minor 
morals are ever social in their rapport, and they call upon 
man to live in an afferent rather than an efferent fashion 
for something other, whether a person or an impersonal 
norm. 

4. THE PRAGMATIC REPUDIATION OF REASON 

In general, the causes of minor morality and its resulting 
ills are to be found in its constant repudiation of reason. 
Now that the dread of rationalism is past, and we are far 
removed from the dogmatism of the Enlightenment, it is 
fitting to note how irrational the moral life of man has be- 
come. Our aim in tendering this criticism is not to exalt 
the understanding to any unnatural position, but to allow 
the precious intellect of man to indicate for him his position 
in the world and his problem in life. Thus we invoke 
reason, not for the sake of reason, which would be like the 
erroneous maxim of virtue for virtue's sake, but because 
reason is identified with the inner nature of humanity, so 
that any repudiation of intelligence is also a repudiation of 
man himself. Minor morality has assumed that man 
possesses immediately all that is necessary for worthy and 
satisfactory action, so that insight is made unnecessary. Is 
not pleasure an immediate sense and conscience an intuition? 
Why need we assume that the purpose of our action is open 
to discussion? This extraordinary condition of affairs 
stands in need of thorough correction ; pleasure and pain, ap- 
proval and disapproval are suggestive and influential forms 
of sense, but not ground for action, and our examination of 
hedonism and intuitionism has shown how feeling and con- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 301 

science can only point to something beyond themselves, 
which is the indwelling life of humanity. But this inner 
life does not assume the form of immediate intelligibility, 
and minor morality is* a serious fault when it teaches us that 
the whole meaning of life and action appears at once in forms 
of sense. 

It is this anti-intellectualism that has culminated in de- 
cadent morality and nihilism, and we are learning what 
folly it was to allow Hume and Kant to exalt conduct at 
the expense of culture. Even before the appearance of 
these moral masters, modern morality began a course of ex- 
periments which in England have resulted in no philosophy 
of life, but a series of "Methods" (Sidgwick), "Data* 
(Spencer), "Types" (Martineau), "Science" (Stephen), to, 
which list must be added the "Prolegomena" of Green. The 
sense of life is lost to these writers who find some phase of 
the moral life and seek at. once to raise it into the scaffolding 
of a system. They shun reason, Green no less than Stephen, 
and see in life nothing but a course of conduct made up of 
individual acts whose intelligible character is ever wanting. 
The modern no longer relates his thought to the central 
problem, but adapts and cramps it to meet the exigencies of 
his school or to score a "victory" for its particular tenets, 
such as autonomy versus heteronomy, and egoism versus 
altruism. He plays his part as intuitionist or hedonist and 
never thinks to inquire, What is action? What is the ap- 
parent purpose of life ? Unity is lost in the manifold, reality 
in appearance. This unintelligent view of life has witnessed 
the exaltation of the will with the result that a theory of 
labor has threatened the humanity of man. Man has been 
reduced to mechanism. Where the 18th century said "Man 
is a machine", the 19th reduced the theory to practice and 
suffered labor to dehumanize the individual. Paganism 
with its exaltation of knowledge, and Scholasticism with its 
abstractions were better calculated to evince the sense of 
humanity than this contemptible modern system which has 
surrendered man to his will and his will to the life of labor. 
We are finding that labor does not consist in cultivating the 
garden of Eden but in toiling amid thorn and thistle by the 
sweat of the brow. Now, such a conduct of life is closely 



302 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

connected with the unreasoning conduct of minor morality 
where virtue has become an excuse for ignorance. 

The usual contemptus intellects is set aside by major 
morality in the re-iteration of man's total nature. Voluntas 
superior est intellectu — such has been the rash assumption 
of the minor moralist, who, like the ever-vacillating Peer 
Gynt, is ready to accept the Boyg's counsel and "Go round 
about." Nevertheless, life cannot be avoided and the man 
of the future must face his own intellect without shame or 
fear. Inwardly viewed, man expresses a perpetual Wunsch 
zur Wahrheit and this has been met with defeat and disap- 
pointment. The will-to-know has not been wholly absent 
from the action of sense of the movement of the will, and 
the life-force which produced the Tamas-guna of feeling and 
the Rajas-guna of will is no less ready to bring man to the 
third estate where he will exercise and enjoy the Sattva- 
guna of insight. Classic contemplation, which was never 
wholly free from sense, never perfectly and romantic con- 
quest, which never really had an object, must yield to a 
hitherto unknown and hence nameless third system where 
ancient scientia and modern potentia unite in the active 
contemplation of the world in its totality. 

Exercise of the will has made man dull to the claims of 
reality, for so long as he was energetic his fatigue acted as 
a narcotic and man was content not to know. It is from 
this "deadly doing" that the major morality seeks to free 
man, and the resulting emancipation may be thoroughly ap- 
preciated in a country like our own where a debauchery of 
action has made us stupid toward the possibilities of a con- 
templative life. We have cultivated the garden, but have 
not found the tree of knowledge; we have willed the homo 
faciens who now rules the earth, which needs not only the 
worker but the thinker, the homo sapiens who shall con- 
template it. Where do we find faith in reason's triumph 
over sense, which is fundamental to major morality? Most 
eminently in Schopenhauer where it is least to be expected. 

Our objection to this practical view of things is a psycho- 
logical scruple in view of the will's inability to contain and 
to express humanity. Intellect, not will, is what distinguishes 
man from the brute, is what at last separates man from the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 303 

world of nature; so that he who contemplates and thus 
obtains a clear mirror of the universe in both nature and 
humanity is the one who has found the purpose of his life, 
while he who simply «acts and entertains only such a quantity 
and such a form of knowledge as shall further action, has 
but a dim comprehension of the essence of his being in its 
moral vocation. Hence the pragmatic hero is only a fine 
specimen of animality whose intellectual powers, not raised 
to the rank of pure cognition, serve only to quicken his in- 
stincts into smoother and surer forms of action. He is 
only another variation of the "blond-beast" whose "blue- 
eyedness" makes him keen in the realization that knowledge 
is pleasure and power, but not value and dignity; every step 
taken in the direction of pragmatism is a step away from 
genius which lies beyond life, that in its remote position it 
may more perfectly reproduce it. Action can never be the 
final consideration in an existence like man's where an inner 
life ever awaits redemption through thought and contempla- 
tion; for action is only a means to an end and we perform 
deeds to demonstrate truth, and turn all our activities into 
experiment. Let nature with its infinite powers do the 
work, let man so weak in will but vast in mind do the think- 
ing: then the purpose of the world-whole in naturistic and 
humanistic forms shall be accomplished. Certain it is that 
there is no safety for man in relinquishing his hold upon the 
intellectual in the blind manner of a pragmatic philosophy. 

5. THE MORALITY OF MAXIMS 

Both forms of minor morality seek to approach the "free 
moral agent" by means of maxims. When we turn away 
from maxims to ideals, we are not repudiating conscience 
and rectitude but are simply protecting major morality from 
all forms of partial conduct. The hedonist as well as the 
intuitionist has presumed to legislate for man, and the same 
imperative of conduct appears first in a hypothetical and then 
in a categorical form; here it is urged for the sake of con- 
sequences, there in view of ethics itself. To act for the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number, or so that the 
maxim of one's conduct may be fit to become universal law, 



304 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

is to be a moral agent but not a man, and nothing but prac- 
tical expediency can account for the development of such 
maxims. Life, when thus interpreted, and its chords struck 
in a minor key, becomes a system of labor, not for the sake 
of an ideal which naturally attracts, but in obedience to a 
maxim without purpose. Such morality of the maxim is 
also forbidding and acts almost altogether in a negative 
fashion; certain it is that it cannot account for man and his 
human progress. 

When one seeks to exchange maxims for ideals it may 
be seen that he is introducing the cavalier into his system of 
major morality. Now this is true in a limited sense only, 
and yet we have no desire to uphold the smug hero of minor 
morality who cannot act with rules. Take the whole evolu- 
tionary system and see what little inspiration it brings to 
the man who himself desires to live nobly and victoriously. 
Some explanation of barbarism in ethics may be forthcoming 
from such systems, or some attempted justification of the 
manufactured hero of an industrial age like ours; but evolu- 
tionary ethics is no more ideal than a financial company 
which systematically goes bond for the honesty of some 
would-be clerk. The moralist seeks to legislate for others 
who are like Plato's workers and warriors, but he refuses to 
be bound by his own rules, inasmuch as they have no such 
merit as the wisdom-virtues of Plato's philosophers. No 
wonder that Nietzsche sees in traditional ethics nothing but 
"slave morality" whose goodness is weakness. An ethical 
system should thus convert its author first, as Buddha became 
his own disciple and Kant lived the categorical imperative. 
But the hedonist transcends hedonism as the intuitionist often 
rises above conscience. If the thinker cannot live his own 
theory, he has been giving, not a justification of morality, 
but an explanation only. 

The idea of cavalier-ethics with its morality minus 
maxims should have only a spiritual interpretation. Of 
course, one cannot help thinking of Nietzsche's "blond beast", 
yet this ideal of violence is the very opposite of the cavalier 
who represents the refining influence of humanity instead of 
vulgar physical self-assertion. Nietzsche's original tribute 
to Apollo as the ideal of contemplation is more in accord 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 305 

with the cavalier of major morality than the willful charac- 
ter later idealized in the form of Dionysius. Indeed, it is 
not at all impossible to elaborate the character of the cavalier- 
moralist so that he sfeall be Christian rather than pagan, an 
ideal of romantic rather than of classic culture. One could 
style him Petrach or Tasso, Schiller or Corot,according as he 
sought him in the earlier or later Renaissance, and could find 
in him the genial triumph of reason over sense. Maxim- 
morality makes man prudential and worldly-wise and in the 
most unimaginative fashion he peruses the mechanical rules 
of a petrified social system ; to him it means life without in-, 
spiration or coloring in a world which gives him no informa- 
tion concerning his ethical place or moral problem. 

The mental blindness of minor morality appears again in 
our distrust of human feeling; hence beauty has suffered at 
the hands of truth. In the instance of aesthetics, it can be 
shown how both antique and modern reasoners distrusted the 
graces so rigorously that ho consistent doctrine of beauty was 
tolerated. The ancient who lived and wrought in the at- 
mosphere of sweetness and light, could not comprehend the 
supreme value of his work. As the age of Plato comes the 
age of Pericles goes, and art gives way before aesthetics. But 
alas! the metaphysical and moral prejudice was so great 
that the speculative could only regard art as vibrating 
between the poles of imitation and utility; hence it was that 
the metaphysical Heraclitus said, "Homer ought to be 
whipped", while the moralistic Plato condemns, not only the 
ancient bard, but all forms of poetic and dramatic enter- 
tainment. For such an attitude the argument is that these 
things are unreal and unnecessary. Aristotle seems more 
tolerant than his predecessors, but his theory of art is 
overwrought with moralistic intentions. Art, like the 
drama, exists that it may exercise the function of kath- 
arsisj by means of which the representation of such passions 
as fear and anger tends to cleanse the soul of them, through 
an artistic process which is itself pleasant. Even Plotinus, 
who was ashamed of his body and would not indulge the 
thought of his corporeality by celebrating his birthday, saw 
how symbolic and aesthetic art could be, and it was he who 
originated the argument which led to "Pleasure without in- 



?4 

306 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

terest" and "Uart pour Vart." 

Our moderns have been lacking in straightforwardness 
in their attitude toward the fine arts. Winckelmann and 
Lessing shun responsibility in their return to classicism; 
Burke and Baumgarten institute psychological aesthetics and 
perhaps may be excused for failing to place the beautiful 
upon a sufficient foundation. Kant and Schopenhauer re- 
veal the moralistic warping which hampered Plato and Aris- 
totle. It is the feeling of " disinterested pleasure", or it is 
"will-less contemplation" which Kant and Schopenhauer ad- 
vance in the interests of art, but their inner motive seems to 
be rigoristic. Art is to stupify man; aesthetics become 
anaesthetics. Both of these writers abandon the artistic 
ideal for the moralistic one. Kant uses aesthetics as the 
culmination of ethics and sees in the beautiful only another 
way of restraining man ; Schopenhauer advances the aestheti- 
cal first as preparation for the severities of the moral life, 
for where one has learned to contemplate apart from willing, 
he can be taught to negate the will-to-live entirely. Both 
distrust life and employ beauty, not in the form of culture, 
but as restraint; meanwhile they tend to classify aesthetics 
as a practical, when it is probably a speculative, discipline 
Schiller's emancipation was never complete, for his theory 
of aesthetical education was so conceived as to require first a 
sensuous, then an artistic, and finally an ethical period in 
human history. But here beauty is swallowed up in virtue, 
as pleasure was absorbed in beauty, and the unity of life is 
broken upon the wheel of moralism. 

6. THE CATEGORIES OF MAJOR MORALITY 

The minor morality of the schools could not exclude 
that major sense of living peculiar to humanity as an inner 
totality. Hence, where hedonism rose to eudaemonism, and 
intuitionism deepened into rigorism, the minor forms of 
ethics proposed the question whether life has value and man 
dignity. Now value and dignity are the categories which 
seem to explain all the ideals of humanity in its position mid- 
way between nature and spirit. What man receives from 
nature in the way of pleasure and desire, utility and well- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 307 

being, convinces him that life has value; while the way that 
he reacts upon nature according to conscience and rectitude, 
freedom and duty, reveals the inner dignity of his moral 
nature. Under the auspices of naturistic and characteristic 
ethics, these two forms of moral thinking were considered 
only indirectly and by way of implication; for the course of 
the argument showed how man transcends both pleasure and 
happiness in his search for value, just as his submission to 
rectitude and duty was undergone for the sake of his in- 
herent dignity. With humanism these categories appear to 
be independent of pleasure and pain, approval and disap- 
proval. 

In the midst of the inadequacies of minor morality there 
persisted a sense of humanity, making possible the develop- 
ment of a major view in keeping with the nature and needs 
of our spiritual life. To avail ourselves of this valuable 
result we must react upon, our inner experience and resolve 
humanity into appropriate categories; only in this way can 
genuine ethics be made possible. Every characteristic age 
will have its moral categories according to which its ideals 
and strivings will find philosophic expression. In its history, 
ethics seems to have made use of some four categories to acr 
count for its sentiments. With its plastic methods and 
formalistic views, antiquity perfected the categories of the 
good and virtue. Modernity, saturated with physical ideas 
and dynamic norms, has expressed its view of life in terms 
of mathematical rectitude and energistic duty. These con- 
cern the essential form of the moral life whose content was 
expressed by naturism according to the general principle of 
pleasure, desire, sympathy, benevolence and the like, called 
good and virtuous, right and dutiful, as the ethical argument 
seemed to demand. Or stated in terms of modern theories 
alone, naturism tended to emphasize well-being in the form 
of the good, while characteristic ethics, having no faith in a 
fixed and finished theory of this sort, resorted to duty. 
Where one theory sought to receive, the other aspired to 
give. From the standpoint of a full humanity, it seems 
necessary to employ categories which are neither so naively 
attached to the world of immediacy nor drawn out of it so 
abruptly as these opposed methods seem to imply. Three 



3 o8 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

categories may be found in value and dignity, which are at- 
tributes of our humanity and products of its incessant striv- 
ing. Value is something internal, thus fulfilling the idea 
of inness, and offering analogy to the categories of good and 
rectitude ; while dignity arises in response to the totality .of 
human life and takes its place beside virtue and duty. Our 
historical sympathies are such that we feel disinclined to de- 
part abruptly from these other ideals that have served man 
so faithfully thus far; yet no conservatism should forbid the 
introduction of new ideals fitted to express and explain the 
sense of human striving in the world. 

The consideration of humanity in the light of these two 
categories will determine the method and secure it against 
insufficiency at the same time the acquired notions of ethical 
philosophy will come in for reconstruction. First in order, 
the category of value must be set off in clear outline, which 
can be done only by viewing it as a psychological fact, like 
pleasure, as well as an ethical ideal, like rectitude. From 
this sense of inherent value attaching to the human soul will 
follow the ideal of life's dignity in a world of human values. 
Man is no longer the creature of desire or the child of duty ; 
he is the man of dignity whose life is to be lived inwardly in 
the light of its worth, outwardly as the expression of human- 
ity. The study of human values should relieve our philoso- 
phy of those inner paradoxes that beset the schemes of nature 
and character, just as the study of man in his dignity may 
be expected to relieve us from casuistry as the unity of ethical 
striving is contemplated. To feel the full force of these 
categories something more than the conventional significance 
attaching to their names must be appreciated ; value indicates 
the whole inner nature of man surveyed ethically, while 
dignity expresses the peculiar humanity of his character. 
When he feels the influence of the ethical ideal it is as a 
sense of value and when he assumes an appropriate attitude 
toward it he receives the mark of moral dignity. 



II 

THE CATEGORY OF VALUE 

I. THE ACTUALITY OF VALUE 

To raise value to the rank of the categorical thinking 
some dialectical labor must be expended to show how the 
mind, in its search for fundamentals in humanity, may repose 
in the idea of something valuable just as well as in that of 
something good or right. All our thinking upon the pheno- 
mena of nature seems incomplete until we have secured such 
mental principles as reality and causality whose metaphysical 
strength is such as to identify them with the ground of the 
world. The mind takes notice of color and tone, of matter 
and motion, but it cannot rest until something more remote 
and enduring is found. As with nature, so with humanity; 
inner experience presents many an interesting quality of 
mind, as pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, but the 
essence of our inner being seems to reside in some sense of 
the good or value, wherein the goal of all life may be found. 
Where categories are universal and necessary, they must also 
appeal to the mind by giving a sense of satisfaction unknown 
among the other elements of our experience. The idea of 
value seems able to do this because it has a range extending 
beyond mere feeling, as also a depth which suffers it to 
remain in the mind when by abstraction other principles have 
been removed. To speak of the reality of the world is suffi- 
cient to satisfy metaphysics, and to discuss the worth of life 
should be enough for morality. 

Since the philosophic standing of value seems to be such 
as to justify its categorical treatment, we may begin to make 
this attempt by contrasting the idea of worth with the ancient 
notion of good and the modern idea of duty. These two 
comparisons may best be carried on simultaneously, inasmuch 
as the idea of value seems to participate in both the static 

309 



3 io VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

principle of a complete good and the dynamic one of con- 
tinuous duty, just as it stands midway between objective 
virtue and subjective rectitude. Both of these views fail 
to point out the value of life and the sense of human striv- 
ing, and where one presents a superb picture of the ethical 
order and the other reveals the superiority of man's moral 
nature, neither shows how the individual may enter the 
world to which he belongs. The ancient notion of good 
was aesthetical where the modern idea of duty is dynamical, 
and the difference between the two is the inner sense of the 
contrast between art and science. Where the first school 
saw no reason to conceal its artistic view of life, the second 
one imitates science and exalts the mathematical order o* 
Tightness as well as the mechanical law of something bind- 
ing. Our modern intuitions of rectitude and laws of duty 
are subordinated to physical science ; the iron has entered our 
soul. In the midst of these plastic and mechanical notions 
humanity with its worth is lost sight of, and the call of man 
to realize the value of his life is ignored. 

The ancient idea of the good was pursued with the 
feeling that man was at one with the world as also with 
himself, so that there prevailed physical and political unity 
between nature and humanity. Plato's ideal Republic, with 
its characteristic division running through cosmos and 
microcosmos, and organizing the virtues and the classes of 
men, shows how perfect the conviction of this harmony could 
be. All that was needed was a certain amount of insight and 
a moderate degree of activity to effect the immediate realiza- 
tion of the good in the realm of immanent moral reality. 
The good exists in the world while virtue is implicit in man ; 
thus reasoned the ancient in his Hellenic calm which, with 
Stoicism, deepened into resignation. No sense of compunc- 
tion or feeling of doubt disturbed the mind of the ancient 
in his ideal possession of the good; no hint of obligation nor 
suggestion of struggle to attain to virtue daunted his moral 
ambition. The eudaemonism of antiquity was carried on in 
the same easy spirit that had identified man with virtue ; and 
now it was suggested that virtue and happiness were one 
The good was looked upon as a category capable of contain- 
ing in undisturbed unity our modern principles of desire 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 311 

and duty. 

Such a view of life may easily be seen to indulge too 
heartily in optimism, for the world is not likely to yield such 
satisfaction as the ideal, of eudaemonia promises, nor is man 
so prepared for life that he will surrender to the ideal with- 
out a struggle. A modern would further criticise life ac- 
cording to the good as somewhat wanting in heroism, inas- 
much as the classic moralist attempted nothing extraordinary 
in the way of ethical striving, and never sank deep enough 
into the abyss of his human consciousness to feel the bitter- 
ness that may be found in man's being. Life must be con- 
ceived of according to unity, and the very category of value, 
now being introduced into the view of human life has no 
other purpose than that of reconciling the manifold of 
human impulses to the central striving of his inner nature; 
but the classic conception of the good makes the world too 
fixed and life too finished for the realization of any such 
inner harmony. The good was likewise too intellectual to 
explain man in his striving or to content him in the active 
pursuit of his goal in the remote world of humanity. Al- 
ready we have seen how the ancient eudaemonism of Aris- 
totle refused to surrender the ideal that man was in posses- 
sion of the good, just as it ever limited human activity to the 
energy of contemplation. Now the question concerning the 
worth of life is too profound to suffer the thought that man 
without conquest may participate in the supreme good of all 
human being. 

On the other hand, the regulative principle of value is 
of service in correcting the opposite error indulged by the 
restless moralism of modern times. Where ancient ethics 
was wanting in beginning, modern morality has no idea oV 
the end that belongs to our striving after being. Conscience 
and rectitude, freedom and duty, are ethical ideals calculated 
to make man eternally restless, and the spirit which put them 
forth is no less active in sundering man from the world and 
setting him at variance with his humanity. Conscience robs 
him of his peace of mind, and the right appeals to him as 
something to be wrought out only after infinite struggle; 
freedom separates him from nature and puts him in bondage 
to the categorical imperative. Happiness is removed from 



3 i2 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

any immediate consideration by a rigoristic system that looks 
upon desire as something unethical; where final blessedness 
is brought into the calculation it is rendered so remote that 
man finds no real way of participating in its benefits. Vast 
problems must be solved by man in the conflict between 
freedom and fate; heavy burdens are laid upon him in pur- 
suit of his duty. Goodness no longer consists in being, but 
in doing, or as the opening sentence of Kant's "Metaphysic 
of Morals" expressed it, "Nothing can be possibly conceived 
in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good 
without qualification, except a good will," 

Where ancient ethics with its fixed notion of the good 
was lacking in moral energy, the modern system reveals a 
painful want of goal. Conscience makes us sensitive and 
calls forth an excess of moral power for either negation or 
affirmation. Rectitude acts as an ideal to keep our minds 
bent upon the moral purpose of our lives. Freedom and 
duty are even more powerful in influencing the striving 
activities of the ethical subject. Yet our modern ethics can- 
not tell us what all this is for. The only apparent aim in 
ethics seems to consist in setting all our faculties in motion, 
that they may function perfectly and urge man to act ac- 
cording to the right method. But in all this, right is only 
an attitude and duty an initiative. What such conduct 
needs is a sense of its own service in human life, but the one- 
sidedness of intuitionism has made this impossible; and even 
if it had been permitted to invest moral life with some con- 
tent, the opposing theory of hedonism would have had no 
suitable suggestion to make. Our ethical philosophy has 
been resultless, and where the ancient perceived no real 
ethical problem, modern thought has been all problem and 
no solution. 

2 — THE CONCEPTUAL NATURE OF VALUE — VALUE AND 
PROGRESS 

The principle of value, as a moral category, seems to 
make up for the deficiencies of both these views. Our 
moderns have made ethical ideals to consist in something 
inner and individual, and thereby sacrificed the antique 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 313 

principles of the permanent and universal; they fled to a 
realm of subjectivity, which made ethical principles lose all 
practical significance. Now the category of value seems to 
contain both of the essentials of these two periods combined 
in such a manner that nothing really necessary is lost. On 
the objective side, value represents something which indi- 
cates a possibility if not an actuality, like the good; at the 
same time it has an inner character, like the modern ideal 
of rectitude. To indicate how a half-real principle may also 
stand out as an ethical norm dependent upon the will for its 
existence, we may speak of value as a realization rather than 
a given reality, like substance, quality, or quantity. Apart 
from the energizing will, value is nothing, yet when the 
will works according to the ethical ideal, instead of merely 
functioning according to rectitude, it creates something which 
theieby becomes real; namely, a principle of worth. Where 
ancient thought partook of realism, modern morality has 
ever been nominalistic, with ideals that stood for names or 
thoughts. The nature of value is best undertsood in the 
conceptual philosophy of Aristotle and Abelard, for it com- 
bines the universal good with the individual act of rectitude 
according to a principle of worth. Thus we may speak of 
the value of life as something both real and ideal, while 
neither the good nor duty is capable of assuming such an 
ontological form. 

The conceptual nature of value appears again when the 
classic spirit of complacency is contrasted with the romantic 
striving of our modern life. Ancient life according to the 
good found expression in more than one form of culture, but 
each conveyed the same lesson: man is at home in the world 
and at one with himself. The physical view of man was 
such as to advance the conviction that the elements of the 
world repeated themselves in the constitution, when Prota- 
goras was able to make man the measure of all things in 
their being and not-being, while Plato found in the cosmos 
the body-soul-mind division that immediately reappeared in 
the appetite-desire-reason elements of the microcosmos. With 
this physical form of unity there came also the feeling that 
man was one with his political environment, whereby Plato's 
classes of men correspond to the divisions of nature and 



3H VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

humanity. In all this, the metaphysical and metapolitical 
independence of man was not entertained and no profound 
sense of striving was evoked within him. Art likewise 
caught the spirit of complacency; indeed, it may have been 
the plastic intuitions of Hellenism which persuaded the 
ancient to accept the universe and take life as he found it. 
Hellenic calm is proverbial and we need only glance back- 
ward at these monuments of epic and plastic art to notice 
the contrast between their composure and our own restless- 
ness. Their ethics also reveals this same spirit as modera- 
tion and resignation, and even the Stoical sense of duty 
aroused just enough activity to bring man to ataraxy. 

Modern romantic ethics lives in no such fixed world 
of being or finished life of art; its life is a perpetual crusade 
for the ideal, while its activities forever arise within the 
self-conscious soul. The only palpable aim is styled happi- 
ness or perfection and yet neither hedonist nor intuitionist 
can tell us wherein the essence of these ideals is to be found. 
Life is made disciplinary, not creative; or, in a word, its 
values are never employed to stimulate moral action or direct 
its course. Our voluntarism is as far from the moral ideal 
as was ancient intellectualism, and our romantic striving for 
we know not what leads nowhere. The prime need in such 
a condition of affairs is a sense of worth which accompanies 
an action from beginning to end. We cannot assume that 
the good exists as intuited by the intellectual reason, nor 
dare we assert that its being depends upon the will of man; 
we are nearer the heart of the matter when we act as 
though there were a possible value which could be realized 
by conscientious effort on the part of the moral subject. This 
value initiates action as effectually as any sense of duty, for 
it appeals to the ethical interest of man; at the same time it 
stands out as prominently as the good in the capacity of the 
goal of our moral striving. With such an interest as inheres 
in this worth of our life we have therefore an ideal capable 
of presiding over the totality of our ethical striving. 

The philosophy of eudaemonism, as discussed in PART 
THREE, brings us face to face with this very contrast 
between two views of the end of life. With a common faith in 
immediacy ancient and modern thought found it necessary to 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 315 

follow distinct methods of treating this, inasmuch as one found 
man's well-being to consist in the possession of the desired 
object, while the other emphasized only the pursuit of it. 
Value, which is both re^al and ideal, immediate and ultimate in 
human life, reconciles these extremes of classicism and roman- 
ticism, by surveying the end of life as something neither 
under nor yet beyond our control. We may have it and yet 
must strive after it ; in itself it exists but in no such seclusion 
that it may not be possessed by man. Where one concep- 
tion makes happiness to consist in mere having, the other 
looks upon it as sheer seeking, the valuational view con- 
siders the end of our being to consist in seeking what may be 
possessed, in searching for what may be found. The 
Trouvere, or finder, thus represents a phase of culture un- 
known in either antiquity or modernity, while he indicates 
the fact that man's well-being consists in a constant search 
for something realizable. 

Such a metaphysical condition of things is explicable only 
in the light of a humanity which is somewhere between 
nature and spirit in its progress toward self-realization. To 
man in his humanity the good cannot be attributed in any 
sincere fashion, for that would raise him to the rank of 
Deity. Nevertheless, this same idea of a perfect condition 
both in conduct and enjoyment cannot be separated from 
him, but must be related to his being as an inevitable tend- 
ency. The conditions of human realization however, are 
not met by the contrary theory that finds our well-being 
and perfection to consist in mere striving according to some 
law of duty, for this would account for only one phase of 
humanity. In nature and yet be} r ond its borders, man is 
also in a world of spirit that is also above him ; his metaphy- 
sical position is thus an ambiguous one so that neither an 
ideal of a fixed good nor that of an indeterminate duty can 
satisfy the conditions of his nature. For this reason, we 
survey humanity from the standpoint of value and regard 
this idea as indicative of a good that settles upon man 
gradually as his spirit advances toward its goal; and among 
the categories of morality only the principle of value seems 
to possess the ontogenetic character that is necessary in any 
consistent view of onward striving and inward living. 



316 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

The foregoing dialetic of value so interprets the category 
that the static of the good unites with the dynamic in duty 
to form a principle of ethical becoming. Upon this basis we 
may strengthen the claims of value still further by pointing 
out how this category makes it possible to preserve the moral 
ideal in the midst of progress: indeed, instead of saying that 
the ethical norm is valid in spite of apparent progress, we 
may assert that it obtains by means of progress. For what 
is to be true of humanity as such must participate in the 
progress that constitutes the essence of the human order. In 
both art and religion, this ideal of an ever-unfolding value 
assumes a definite and positive form. Upon the three 
different stages of his existence man may be said to possess 
characteristic goods or to pursue appropriate duties, but be- 
hind these forms of the moral ideal seems to lurk a deeper 
sense which expresses itself in these other two forms: hence 
it seems more consistent to view the development of man's 
inner world by regarding it in the light of an increasing sense 
of worth as man's self-realization goes on. 

When this general principle of progress is applied to 
the terms of systematic ethics the varieties of the moral norm 
are so few that the idea of change involves no inherent con- 
tradiction. Man as we know him belongs to nature and 
spirit, hence we find in his consciousness a commingling of 
desire and duty, in which may be recognized, however, the 
same attempt at human self-affirmation and the realization 
of spiritual life. Even when man is upon the low plane of 
nature-life his pursuit of the concrete in feeling is none the 
less an attempt to realize value, while upon the highest 
known plane of civilization the abstract ideals of life have 
no other explanation. It is the same ideal of human value 
that man seeks first in sense, then in reason, first in pleasure, 
then in virtue. For the pleasure of man is not as the pleas- 
ure of an animal nor his virtue that of an angel. Hence 
the whole plan of moral life presenting varieties of the moral 
ideal is only a consistent scheme of values exhibited by the 
one humanity as it passes through the stages of nature, law 
and freedom. Where pure hedonism needs no principle of 
progress, where intuitionism can admit none, humanism can 
express itself in no other way. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 317 

3 — VALUE AS AN INTUITION 

So important is this formal determination of the essence 
of value that it is worth while to consider it further, as the 
reconciliation of sense and reason so far as these are ap- 
propriated by the striving will of humanity. This phase of 
the contrast is of special significance, too, since our discus- 
sion of naturistic and characteristic ethics was carried on 
by constrasting the functions of sensuous feeling and rational 
will. The category of value is broad enough in form as 
sufficiently rich in content to include these opposing forms 
of human existence. Because man belongs to humanity and 
not wholly to the world of spirit, it is impossible to detach 
him altogether from the world of immediate existence, and 
survey his life as though it had no interest. At the same time, 
a hedonic view despairs of accounting for the definite striv- 
ing for the ideal manifest in man as soon as his civilization 
and culture begin to draw him out of nature; for man re- 
veals a capacity for disinterestedness appearing in his sense 
of impersonal rectitude. In the midst of this dilemma, 
where sense-interest and virtuous disregard for well-being 
seem about to reduce all moral reasoning to perpetual para- 
dox, there appears the category of value with the effect of 
reconciling opposites by relating them to common principles 
beneath their contrary forms. Suppose that, in his naturis- 
tic capacity, man does seek pleasure. It is not for the sake 
of its merely felt quality, but because of its interest for him, 
or the value that it seems to promise. Or, look upon him 
characteristically, and observe the striving after virtue. Here 
again man is persuaded that his ideal possesses an inherent 
worth, which he strives to attain to and realize in his life. 

Humanity is the valuing system of the universe, and its 
history is the history of values. Sense alone cannot contain 
man or control his activities: reason alone with its painful 
want of content is similarly ineffectual ; but an inherent idea 
of worth that can express itself in both sense and intellect 
seems best calculated to express the inner life of man and 
the peculiar way in which this comes forth into the world of 
sense, where it interprets nature according to the rational 
methods of science, and seeks to perfect it by means of art. 



318 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Let it not be thought that the term humanity stands for a 
mere generalization like plant and animal, for it indicates 
something unique. For man there is only one problem, only 
one fact — humanity, its culture and inward realization; in 
human life the central problem is the problem of values. 
The whole history of humanity is the unfolding of values 
marked here and there by critical transvaluations. The 
peculiar nature of humanity further appears in the fact that 
it cannot be objectified by reason after the manner of either 
nature or spirit, and while it is the most obvious fact to 
man, he is unable to survey it abstractly inasmuch as it can- 
not be detached from him. 

The principle of intuition so significant in aesthetics now 
allies itself with the idea of value, while the latter reacts 
upon this extraordinary form of knowledge with the effect 
of giving it additional weight. Human intuitions reveal a 
clear consciousness of man's place in the total world-order 
by turning away from both sense and reason in their ex- 
tremes of concrete and abstract and finding a safe mean 
between them. The concept stands out as the first product 
of the understanding due to abstraction and generalization; 
its valuable marks consist in its necessity and universality. 
The percept springs from sense and, with its advantage of 
immediacy, it possesses the limitation of particularity and 
contingency. Midway between these higher and lower ex- 
tremes of the human understanding is intuition with a form 
both conceptual and perceptible. Intuitions like space and 
time, beauty and value, contain the universal and necessary, 
but in a perceptible and individual form, having none of the 
limitations of abstraction and generalization here, or of 
particularity and contingency there. Thus a definite form- 
ula in algebra or a particular proposition in geometry, as 
well as an individual statue or a single act of virtue, contain 
a universal and necessary truth in the immediate form of 
perceptibility. By virtue of this class of ideas, which are 
independent of sense alone or understanding alone, but de- 
pendent upon both of them in combination, we possess 
mathematical and aesthetical truth, and in the intuition the 
ethical form of judgment may also be found. Hence the 
foundation of moral truth cannot be discovered in sense or 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 319 

in reason, but in a humanity that strangely combines the two 
in every characteristic thought and deed. 

4 THE SOURCE OF THE VALUE- JUDGMENT 

The category of value, however, is capable of something 
more than dialectical discussion, for its central position in 
the life of humanity furnishes it with a manifold of conscious 
elements. To understand the essence of value, that it may 
be placed beside the good and parallel with duty as a moral 
finality, it becomes necessary to subject it to psychological 
scrutiny both as to its form and content, and first in order 
of notice comes the fact that value is something internal and 
humanistic, not external and naturistic. In making what 
may appear to be such a dubious assertion we do not mean 
that value is without objective reference, but simply declare 
that it belongs to man as human and objectifies itself in some 
other than the natural order, namely, the world of values 
as we shall finally consider it. To penetrate to the inward 
meaning of the value- judgment it becomes necessary to 
abandon the idea that value is a quality inhering in things, 
as though gold or bread, a book or a pen, had any value in 
itself, and content ourselves with the thought that it is our 
humanity that evaluates things. 

A few instances taken from other mental fields will 
serve to introduce the psychological point of the internal 
nature of worth. Sensation with its immediate dependence 
upon physical stimulus is possessed of subjective quality and 
intensity, so that no matter how close may be the psycholo- 
gical connection between visual sensation and the light, au- 
ditory sensation and sound, the qualities appearing consist 
of color and tone whose existence is purely mental. In a 
similar fashion we may argue for the inward essence of 
beauty as disinterested human pleasure. Such aesthetic taste 
may well direct itself back toward nature to admire its 
forms and qualities or may seek satisfaction in some human 
creation; but the sense of beauty lies neither in the land- 
scape nor in the statue, but in the mind of the beholder. A 
third instance appears in the case of utility, and while we 
may speak of things as though they were useful, the essence 



320 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

of utility is found in human consciousness. Such an article 
as a hammer is useful only to a being fitted with a hand; a 
fine surgical instrument has utility only for a person with 
special skill, and a book of useful information sustains such a 
character only to a person able to appreciate it. Hence we 
cannot speak of utility as the fixed quality of any thing, but 
must regard it as something internal and relative. 

Similar forms of expression must be found to contain the 
principle of value as this is no less subjective than beauty, 
utility or sensation. Even where the principle of value 
reaches its lowest and most practical form in economics the 
same internal view is possible. In its most general charac- 
ter, value expresses our human sense of need in its contrast 
to the mere actuality of the world, and there is a sense in 
which all philosophy consists in relating these inner wants 
to outer facts. The inward nature of value is found in 
human feeling, surveyed in the broadest sense as something 
susceptible to judgment and capable of being expressed in 
desire. It was in this general and aesthetic sense that Her- 
bart discussed the idea as something connected with preference 
or rejection and yet not a matter of feeling; although this 
rather contradictory condition may be explained by saying 
that Herbart's intellectualism led him to regard no element 
but that of representation as final. At a later period, Lotze 
took a similar view, so far as the internal nature of value 
is concerned, but allied himself with hedonism by claiming 
that value and lack of value could never in themselves be 
attributed to things since both existed in the form of pleas- 
ure and pain in a sensitive subject. "Es giebt gar keinen 
Wert oder Unwert, der an sich einem Dinge zukommen 
konnte; beide existieren bloss in Gestalt von Lust und Un- 
just, die ein gefuhlsfahiger Geist erfahrt (Grundziige der 
praktischen Philosophic, §7). In a more determined fashion- 
Ehrenfels has expressed the inner nature of value by assert- 
ing that we do not desire things because they have value; 
but they have value because we desire them. "Nicht des- 
wegen begehren wir die Dinge, weil wir jene mystische, un- 
fassbare Essenz 'Wert' in ihnen erkennen, Sondern deswegen 
sprechen wir den Dingen 'Wert* zu weil wir sie begehren" 
(Sys. d. Werttheorie, 1. Bd. S. 1.) 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 321 

5 — VALUE, PLEASURE AND DESIRE 

The most natural determinant of worth appears in the 
form of pleasure, an4 although we have relegated hedonism 
to an inferior position in the ethical striving of humanity, 
we find it expedient to review the case of pleasure in order 
to see wherein it may relate to the idea of value whose con- 
tent is now being sought. Value is internal and thus finds 
a place in human feeling where pleasure itself dwells; but 
from this natural condition of psychological phenomena it 
does not follow that pleasure and value are the same. There 
is a natural connection between our sense of worth and our 
feelings of pleasure and pain, inasmuch as both indicate our 
human interest, and while we do not see fit to identify these 
processes, we cannot deny that feeling, even in its immediate 
hedonic sense, may symbolize the general sense of value 
which we have raised to the rank of ethical category. At 
this point, the element of pleasure must be analyzed not 
only for its own sake, but because it is regarded as a rival 
of desire in the psychological determination of worth. 

One need not argue long to show how feeling presents 
a certain aspect of value, so that the only question concerns 
its sufficiency as a determination of worth. In addition to 
the quality of feeling, which arises organically in connection 
with such physiological functions as respiration and circula- 
tion of the blood, there is the inner appreciation of the feel- 
ing as something significant for man. Theoretical philosophy 
may relate man to the world according to the principles of 
knowledge and reality, but human life demands something 
more than actuality ; hence arises a practical philosophy which 
takes the facts of pleasure and pain and applies them in such 
a way as to secure a view of life and conduct. Our simple 
sensations furnish us with the materials of knowledge, al- 
though it is a long way from the mere reception of stimuli 
to the elaboration of judgments; so our simple feelings, in- 
stead of sinking into mere animal or even vegetable functions, 
rise, detaching themselves from their sources, and lead us to 
assume an attitude toward our life in the world. 

The essential element in this pleasurable determination 
of value lies in the principle of judgment based upon feeling. 



322 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Meinong's "Psychologisch-Ethische Untersuchungen zur 
W 'erth-Theorie'' ', 1894, finds the essence of value to con- 
sist in pleasure so formulated in the judgment that one 
attributes ^alue to an object when its existence causes pleas- 
ure, its non-existence pain. Negatively considered, one finds 
lack of value (Unwert) to arise as a judgment when the 
existence of the object causes pain, its non-existence pleasure 
(S 5-8). This he narrows down quite empirically by 
declaring that the object to be valued must exist." Man 
kann in diesen Sinne sagen : fur die Wertgejuhle ist es wesent- 
lichj dass sie Existenz-Gefiihle sing" (S. 5). Reischle, 
whose interest is the theological rather than the economic 
one, finds value to consist in something pleasurable, but 
believes that the object may be ideal as well as real while 
the subject is found in the entire ego, rather than in some 
function of consciousness. Value is defined as "die Eigens- 
chaft eines Gegenstandes, durch sein Dasein meinern fuhlend- 
wollenden Ich direckt oder indireckt Befriedigung zu 
gewahren (W erturtheile und Glaubensurtheile, S. 43). 

The definition of value in terms of pleasure has all the 
advantages of immediacy and definiteness and thus a diffi- 
cult psychological problem seems capable of easy solution. 
Yet the history of hedonism has made us suspicious of such 
a form of calculation, and where pleasure fails to account 
for the conduct of life it is not likely to satisfy the conditions 
of a value-theory. Nevertheless, we may indulge the 
thought that value has something about it for the sake of 
realizing that to a human consciousness feeling consists of 
something more than a felt quality, for the reason that it 
appeals to a special form of life. Just as the phenomena of 
nature have a formal significance for man with his science 
and art, so the phenomena of consciousness must be subjected 
to human interpretation if their ultimate nature is to be 
known. Reason assumes an attitude toward the world of 
sense and turns it into a system of natural forms, while it 
surveys the inner world of feeling with the effect of ordering 
it according to a judgment of worth. Just as the hedonic 
law seeks to descend to the sub-conscious and turn pleasure 
into bodily benefit and pain into bodily harm, so the law of 
value calls upon us to raise these qualities from mere feeling 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 323 

to the plane of knowledge and judgment. Feeling thus 
constitutes the raw material of value and while we cannot 
say the pleasurable is the worthy, any more than we could 
assert that color and tone are knowledge, we cannot deny 
that apart from feeling value is nothing. 

In itself, pleasure is limited by the temporal and passive 
in such a way as to forbid its attaining to the full stature 
of value. Pleasure is instantaneous and its evanescent form 
does not seem to have the stability of a value- judgment 
which exists out of time as a permanent attitude of man 
toward his life in the world. Pleasure also comes in as the 
result of an activity promoted by the value of the object 
sought, and if we had to wait for pleasure to determine our 
values, we should have no means of determining our at- 
titude toward our inner experience, no way of arousing 
activity toward the realization of our desires. Reischle's 
idea of Gesammt-ich Befriedigung escapes purely hedonic 
difficulty of a temporary pleasure as the value determinant; 
but does not fulfill our expectations of an active principle in 
harmony with the striving nature of humanity. 

Not only the weakness of pleasure as something passive 
occurring only now and then in consciousness inclines us 
toward desire, but the latter seems more fully to accord 
with our inner human striving. When, therefore, we seek 
to represent man's attempt to raise himself above nature for 
the sake of human realization, we find that our philosophy 
is furthered by a theory of value, according to which the 
humanity of man becomes a question of his worth. Man 
strives not on account of some metaphysical ideal of being, 
but for the sake of attaining the value that by right of human- 
ity belongs to him. The ontological fact expressed by say- 
ing, "I think, therefore I am/' is capable of an ethical in- 
terpretation whereby the individual reasons, "I feel, there- 
fore I have worth." Humanity is at once theoretical and 
practical, real and ideal; its being and character are express- 
ible also in terms of value, and if, for the sake of argument, 
we assume that self-consciousness could consist of the mere 
thought of self apart from the feeling of self, it is inconceiv- 
able that the being of man as human could be established. 
To be man consists in something more than making a dis- 



324 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

tinction between self and not-self; it involves a contrast 
between the worth of the soul and the non-worth of the 
world. Desire is a form of human striving directed toward 
value. 

In determining the general nature of worth, we found 
desire to be a consistent way of indicating how internal and 
human our sense of value really is; for the value of a thing 
seems to consist in its desirability. In contrast to Meinong, 
Ehrenfels makes value to consist in desire, and sees in it a 
relation between subject and object, rather than a character- 
istic or function of the object itself. (Sys. d. Werttheorie, 
S. 2i ). The contrast between pleasure and desire reveals 
the fact that, where one relates itself to the present, the other 
is allied with the future; and so marked is the competition 
between them that, where desire is active, pleasure is want- 
ing, but as pleasure comes in desire departs. We desire 
what we do not have ; we no longer desire when once we are 
in possession of our object. To overcome this difficulty, 
Krueger has modified the idea of desire so that it stands for 
desire in the larger sense of a "relatively constant desire" — 
Wertvoll ist fur mich nur, was ich relativ konstant begehre 
(Des Absolut Wertvollen S. 33). According to this am- 
plification, one could value an object without actually desir- 
ing it for the time being by seeing how it corresponds to his 
relatively constant desire. 

The secret of value seems to be found in desire whose 
inner nature is made up of both feeling and will. What- 
ever be the exact nature of the impulse toward reality, 
whether will-to-live or struggle for existence, it is evident 
that by means of its career in nature the human species has 
acquired a desire to live according to the nature of its own 
type, whereby we are entitled to speak of a specific human 
striving. At heart, this striving is desire and the unknown 
tendency urging onward both nature and humanity reflects 
itself in man's conscious striving after self-realization. Human 
values are human desires surveyed in the light of the con- 
stant impulse toward the inner perfection of humanity, and 
while it is misleading to adopt a simple formula which says, 
"The value of a thing is its desirability", it is active feeling 
that perfects our sense of worth and inspires man in his 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 325 

attempts at the assertion of his selfhood in opposition to 
nature. Nevertheless, empirical desire in its given form 
cannot fully express the nature of value, and where Krueger 
in his search for absolute worth found it necessary to ad- 
vance beyond Ehrenfels, we must take still another step 
and consider value in an idealized form. 

The valuable is the desirable; such seems to be the con- 
dition of the question when the essential nature of humanity 
is related to the goal it ever seeks. This position is not the 
same as that expressed by saying, A thing has value because 
we desire it; or, The value of an object is determined by the 
relatively constant desire for it ; but consists in saying. Value 
is idealized desire. We cannot run the risk of logical fallacy 
by saying, Value indicates what we ought to desire, for by 
means of the concept of value we seek to determine the 
nature of obligation. Humanity has no place for an uncondi- 
tioned ought yet it evinces the tendency to idealize its desires 
in such a way as to make them the basis of the moral life. 
When, therefore, we say that value indicates desirability, 
we do not assert that the empirical ego actually surrenders 
himself to such an ideal, but simply claim that reason 
recognizes the presence of a desire of desires, sought by man 
in independence of a law of duty. When the Hebrew 
psalmist says, The judgments of Jehovah are more to be 
desired than gold, he does not mean that mere desire or 
mere duty inclines man toward such ideals, but suggests that 
when man is himself, he naturally chooses these ethical prin- 
ciples as elements of his own nature. While duty as well as 
desire may seem to be a determinant of worth, it is because 
the man of sense-experience does not lend himself to ideal 
tasks without some sort of struggle whose severity is often 
confused with moral merit. 

The man of common experience does not know the life 
of values and cannot see in virtue that which is to be de- 
sired. Suppose our "free moral agent" were the ideal man, 
or the "man of the future" ; would he not choose the highest 
in life as something native to him? For ourselves, we must 
live according to idealized desires, or value- judgments, which 
are only partly verified by experience, and yet we may real- 
ize that life has the possibility of nobility unknown in the 



326 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

morals of desire or duty. Value is thus a human attribute 
given to man in view of his moral vocation, and while a 
critical pessimism forbids that we should survey man as at 
all ideal, still we are enabled to see the meaning of his ethical 
life as one of values whose essence is the desire of the ideal- 
ized man. Such a psychological determination of the con- 
tent of value seems to be in keeping with the conceptual idea 
of its form as something both immediate and ultimate. An 
ethical theory which seeks to account for the inner life of 
humanity, while it aims also to point out the apparent destiny 
of man, has no need to pursue such psychological analysis 
any further. Value has a real place in consciousness, so that 
we need not construct an ideal arbitrarily as has been done 
with the intuitional idea of rectitude ; we need only carry to 
its just conclusion the principle of desire that makes man 
what he is. 

To be worthy, a theory of value must gratify something 
more than psychological curiosity about the origin of judg- 
ments of worth. Hence the proper order for such a theory 
to follow, consists in a forward movement calculated to 
align an ideal value rather than a backward one hemmed 
in by man's immediate life in nature and societv. Our 
object has been to investigate the ever-perfecting values of 
the world of culture rather than the primitive ones of the 
world of nature In this way, we may question the 
value of our values, and seek to distinguish permanent 
worth from temporary marginal utility. Ethics should seek 
the unity of value as this is gradually being perfected by the 
development of humanity. Such unity exists even where 
we are unable to express it in convincing language; philoso- 
phy cannot decide the ultimate nature of substance or good- 
ness, but there is only one reality and only one value. For 
itself, the category of value seems to satisfy the conditions 
of an ethical theory, because it harmonizes the real and ideal, 
feeling and will, while it leaves the unity of the spirit un- 
disturbed by a conflict between theoretical and practical. 



Ill 

VALUE AS ETHICAL SANCTION 

I THE GROUND OF MORAL JUDGMENT 

The conceptual form of value and its psychological posi- 
tion in desire encourage us to believe that we have found 
something indeed categorical whose nature may be compared 
with the good and duty. Our aim has been to work back 
from the active principle of duty to the passive idea of the 
good by means of the conceptual notion of worth. In the 
unity of these contrary principles we hope to find an ethical 
ideal for the future. The case of the good is no longer 
imminent, so that the corrective function of value applies 
more directly to the modern notion of duty, where revision 
is sadly needed. Our modern age has not really repudiated 
duty, but it has shown a hesitancy to obey a command whose 
purpose is not and cannot be made known. Both the source 
and outcome of action are excluded by the theory of obliga- 
tion; man ought to obey, that is enough. Nevertheless, this 
nameless duty, connected with no natural spring of action 
and conducive to no result in conduct, does not seem to ex- 
press the highest in humanity and we feel justified in turning 
to the category of value to see how far it expresses the sense 
of our ethical striving. 

With special reference to conscience, we may note again 
how human is this sense of approval-disapproval. If con- 
science depends upon a sense of agreement or disagreement 
with the human order, we may assume further that this rela- 
tion consists of no mere theoretical adjustment of individual 
to humanity, but a practical sense of worth according to 
which right and wrong may be determined. Conscience 
dictates values as these arise in the realization of humanity, 
and apart from a feeling of worth the ideas of approval and 
disapproval have no content. So far as the progress of 

327 



328 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ethics is concerned, the sense of approval has received only 
hedonic treatment as though it were a form of pleasure, while 
its significance as a relation between man and his humanity 
is better understood as a sense of value. These values that 
conscience defends assume the form of standards whose 
violation causes remorse; they represent the desires of hu- 
manity which when thwarted redound upon the offender in 
the form of pain. If man did not offend a sense of value 
and thereby cause harm, his sense of compunction could 
have no significance. 

An approach to the category of value may now be made 
by still another criticism of characteristic ethics. This 
system surveys morality as such apart from any other human 
interest, and by so doing realizes the ideals of autonomy, 
duty and the like. But such a formal triumph is not brought 
about without cost, for we observe that it makes morality 
appear to be without worth. Let us return to the usual 
questions of conventional morality. "What is right? That 
which is right. Why should we perform duty? Because 
it is duty." The argument is convincing, as the case is com- 
plete, and had we only the law of identity to guide us, 
nothing more could be said, for right is right as surely as 
duty is duty. But just as all science seeks synthetic judg- 
ments capable of enlarging our knowledge of nature and 
enriching its content, so genuine ethics seeks to account for 
humanity as its life is conducting itself, and man is not 
called upon to repudiate desire simply because a certain 
theory of ethics cannot include that in its system. Rigorism 
is of negative value only; it convinces us that our life is not 
realized in nature, but does not proceed to show us how its 
end is found in humanity. It convinces us that virtue exists, 
but does not show that it has worth. 

The formal aim of the theory of value when considered 
in strict connection with ethics is found in the function of 
judgment. Thus furnished, we may say, "Virtue has value; 
duty should be done because of its worth ', but unless this 
sense of value obtains, the obligation to fulfill the obligation 
does not hold. Owing to the limitation of our knowledge, 
we cannot always indicate precisely what the moral outcome 
of an act may be, but we can rest assured that if it be 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 329 

absolutely obligatory it is because it possesses absolute worth. 
It is inconceivable that a duty should be binding when it does 
not indicate any inherent value. With temperance and 
courage, the virtues involved express at once the values im- 
plied. With benevolence and justice, we find that the human 
values inherent in society make these virtues real. And with 
veracity and honesty, however intuitive and indisputable 
they seem, the same reasoning holds good; for these virtues 
do not represent a relationless attitude on the part of the 
moral subject, but a condition of humanity so marked by 
social and economic relations that these forms of fidelity are 
praised for their inherent worth. Could they be virtuous, 
if they were worthless? 

Where the idea of value supplies the ground of rectitude, 
so it also gives a reason for moral endeavor. From the 
standpoint of the isolated deed, the conventional theory of 
duty may act as a satisfactory guide, and with ethics in the 
lesser sense of the term, indicating a study of mere action, 
it may keep its accustomed place. But as a philosophy of life 
which surveys the totality of inner consciousness, as well as 
the continuity of human striving, the theory of duty has 
little to offer; for obligation can never account for the com- 
plete performance of humanity in its striving after self- 
realization. The ethics of duty has no sympathy for human- 
ity and in its cynicism sees no reason why the soul should 
seek nourishment from beauty and joy. At the same time it 
distrusts man and suggests that were duty withdrawn the 
will would forever go astray in its striving. For these and 
other reasons it seems to follow that one who surrenders to 
duty must also abandon his humanity, and he who makes 
rectitude the guide of his life can never realize himself as a 
human spirit. The morality peculiar to the school of charac- 
teristic ethics is ever the morality of negation, and in its 
destructive course it tends to crush all ideals and interests. 
It makes man subordinate to ethics when ethics is only one 
of the products of his human spontaneity. 

2 — THE SENSE OF MORAL ACTION 

The theory of valueless duty loses in logical consistency 



330 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

as it gains in moral force. If man is called upon to sur- 
render himself to the categorical imperative, he should have 
some idea why this sacrifice is to be made, but duty as 
ordinarily conceived is unintelligible. We ought; that is the 
whole of the matter. An ethical philosophy of life cannot 
tolerate such a paradox, but demands that moral action shall 
sustain some relation to human striving; hence where life is 
conceived of as having a purpose, morality can only be viewed 
as though it conduced to that same end. The theory of life 
as duty makes no provision for the results of moral en- 
deavor, just as it fails to supply a ground for our ethical 
judgments. Right is right because it has value; duty must 
be done because it promotes worth — such is the standpoint 
our view of humanity and its values allows us to assume; 
but the traditional theory of duty fears to use such hypothe- 
tical imperatives and prefers to leave rectitude groundless and 
duty resultless. At the same time, man is suspected of un- 
due interest in the origin and outcome of his duties when he 
demurs against sheer duty, yet it cannot be denied that he 
has an intellectual right to know why he must so act, especial- 
ly when conduct costs so much in the way of self-denial. 

Value is the absolute good to which other ethical prin- 
ciples must relate themselves; into it all sense of human 
pleasure falls, while from it all feeling of duty springs. It 
is in this sense that Krueger, in "Der Be griff des absolut 
W ertvollen" , makes the absolute ought to consist in absolute 
worth. "Von absoluten Sollen oder unbedingter Pflicht 
darf die wissenschaftliche Ethik nur Reden im Sinne eines 
absolut W ertvollen, wo absolut nicht anders bedeutet, als, 
unbedingt fur jedes wertende Bewusstsein" (S. 60). The 
"good" that remains in moral isolation so that it does not 
touch the inner life of man is good in name alone, and when 
we seek content for it we can find this only in a sense of 
value, or man's appreciation of his life in the world. Simi- 
larly the duty that absorbs all of man's activities without 
promising to advance him toward the goal of his life, indeed, 
without being able to promote his human interests, is equally 
empty, and only an artificial system of moralizing can put 
man in such a paradoxical position. To see worth in obliga- 
tion, and to make the moral law a law of values is to relieve 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 331 

a troubled situation. 

The determination of value through desire has the ad- 
vantage of effecting the transition to the ideal of obligation. 
Already, in our attempt to correct the notion of an abstract 
duty's binding us without regard to our position in the 
world, we turned to the idea of humanity as a natural deter- 
minant of obligation; for without any categorical impera- 
tive, we feel obliged to choose certain jnoral goods and that 
in a manner quite different from mere logical conviction or 
aesthetical preference. That which is calculated to con- 
strain us in such matters is the inherent sense of worth at- 
taching to an idea, and when that feeling of worth has about 
it the dynamic element of desire, the meaning of obligation 
becomes clearer. It is easier to speak of duty as having value 
than of value as possessing duty; in other words, value is 
the predicate that includes the subject, since the latter in- 
dicates something more extensive than the former. Where 
there is no value there can be no duty, for the imperative 
calling upon us to choose something indifferent could not 
exist as a moral ideal. Hence, we may say that, though 
things have value because we desire them, they should be 
done because they have value. 

Moral values thus established by humanity in its progress 
toward realization are not to be confused with utilities. The 
difference between value and utility may be seen by con- 
trasting the empirical condition of society as something given, 
and the ideal condition of humanity as conceived by the 
mind. Virtues may serve as practical utilities for a society 
in some particular condition of civilization, as courage for 
the Spartan, wisdom for the Athenian, justice for the Roman; 
but from the standpoint of inner humanity these same ideals 
stand out as inherent values. The architecture of the Part- 
henon had utility for the religion of the Athenians in their 
day, but it also has value for all mankind. In establishing 
the value of our experiences we do not seek to show that 
they are useless, but want only to point out how value serves 
the ethical interests of man and furthers his self-realization 
in a way that utility, with its place in immediate advantage, 
does not. Utilities are confined to the naturistic wants of 
man as these assume economic forms; values have a humanis- 



332 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

tic significance and supply the foundation for the ethical life 
of man. Values may be realized through utilities, but they 
are not bounded by them and relate to them only in the 
sense that both concern the interest of man in his ambiguous 
position in the universe. 

3 VALUE AS BASIS OF MORAL BELIEF 

The valuational determination of morality is advantageous 
further in offsetting ethical skepticism. Where the ethical 
is based upon the naturistic principle of desire or the charac- 
teristic principle of duty, it is likely to fall short of man's 
moral expectations, inasmuch as desire gives too little and 
duty asks too much. When morality is not subordinated to 
the totality of life it may mislead man and make him doubt 
the wisdom of obeying the moral law; for which reason it 
becomes all the more urgent to establish the worth of our 
moral striving. Poetry is always effective when it subsumes 
a human creature beneath some impersonal law and then, 
by a process of action and suffering, shows how to break 
down under the strain of the ideal. Either he has expected 
immediate eudaemonistic benefits or he has had such faith in 
himself as to imagine his morality could keep him abreast of 
life. The drama of Job as well as the dramas of Ibsen point 
to this despair over the resultlessness of the ideal as one of 
the abysses into which the soul may fall without knowing 
how to extricate himself. Ethical nihilism is founded upon 
just such doubt concerning nature and humanity in their 
relation to the moral ideal. 

Upon eudaemonistic principles, Job finds no safe way 
to determine the value of righteousness. Prosperity leads 
his tempter to ask, "Does Job fear God for naught?" (I. 9), 
and when he is brought low without and within and is con- 
fronted by faith and righteousness divested of all advantage, 
the Temanite assails even these and asks, "Can a man be 
profitable unto God? Is it pleasure to the Almighty that 
thou art righteous?" (xxn 2-3). Whatever may be the 
assignable outcome of this Hebrew drama it will appear 
that the hero gains in insight and gradually learns to find 
the worth of righteousness in something substantial. Ibsen 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 333 

hardly escapes from nihilism in his moral satire, "Brand", 
and in the social dramas of his later period, yet he does not 
fail to point out how dangerous is a groundless ethics which 
insists upon duty withput assigning any reason for its per- 
formance. "Brand" involves its author in a moral skepti- 
cism incident upon the fearful consequences of an uncom- 
promising "All or Naught." In more direct fashion Mrs. 
Alving, with the "Ghosts" of "dead ideas" and "lifeless 
beliefs" about her, turns upon her moralistic Pastor Manders 
by saying, "When you forced me under the yoke of what 
you call duty and obligation; when you lauded as right and 
proper what my whole soul revolted against as something 
loathsome; it was then that I began to look into the seams 
of your doctrines. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; 
but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled 
out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn" 
(Act. 11). With more personal reference to Ibsen himself 
the "Wild Duck" represents the author's self-contempt in 
the person of Gregers Werle who went about presenting 
the "claim of the ideal" while suffering from an "acute at- 
tack of integrity" (Act 111). Later dramas like "Ros- 
mersholm" seem to reassert faith in the ideal, but they, as 
in this case, point out how the "Rosmer view of life en- 
nobles, but kills all happiness" (Act iv) ; while "The 
Master Builder" represents the hero as wanting in the 
"robust conscience" of a Viking (Act 11). It is true that 
these dramas do not lead us to a secure ideal, but they are 
of value in warning ethical writers against an absolute ethics 
of the unconditioned. Man should be taught that the pur- 
suit of the good, while it may not yield a full amount of 
immediate happiness, is not necessarily a resultless drudgery 
according to an alien law; and in the midst of moral success 
and failure there is still an abiding sense of moral worth. 

On the other hand, the valuational view of ethics tends 
to reveal the meaning of wrong as well as rectitude. Hedon- 
ism can call it pain, and rigorism speak of it as disobedience, 
but the essential nature of badness is capable of more 
thorough determination. Man cannot harm the universe, 
that is, the world of individual things or individual persons; 
but he can wrong humanity and its sense of values. It is 



334 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

» 

not the body or the mind that is wronged by the aggressor's 
insult or act of violence, but man's inherent sense of value 
as this appears in the totality of his consciousness. Upon 
any other determination, the sense of suffering wrong or 
doing wrong seems to have no significance, and where the 
worth of human life is not considered, both right and wrong 
seem blind and purposeless. He who trespasses upon the 
rights of another is moved by the idea of some value that 
his bad act will bring him, while the person threatened by 
the wrong feels that he is about to sustain some loss of value 
belonging to him. The suffering of a certain amount of 
pain or the knowledge that an abstract commandment was 
being broken could never account for our feelings when we 
are wronged, for the suffering has a deeper source in the 
valuing consciousness of our very life. 

From the standpoint of the wrong-doer the evil act 
creates an illusion whereby vices like greed or lust, revenge 
or violence in general seem to advance the interests of the 
malicious ego. But the wisdom of life constantly warns 
man that such a hope is fruitless, inasmuch as all evil-doing 
is in vain. Thus the vanity of wrong seems to follow as the 
negative consequence of the value of rectitude, so that he who 
follows virtue can never lose anything valuable, just as he 
who follows vice can never thereby be the gainer. In such 
a double fashion does the category of value afford a sanction 
for ethics, in that it supplies a ground for moral action. 
Pleasure may act as a motive for virtuous action, but it can 
never supply a sufficient reason for the same; the sense of 
duty may be invoked but its lack of purposes only points out 
the need of a further principle in ethical action and judg- 
ment. Value-vanity as a moral standard set up by humanity 
carries us beyond both pleasure and duty and appeals to the 
very sense of our life in the universe. From it we learn 
how virtue advances the supreme human interest of man 
while vice tends to hinder his progress toward the goal of 
his striving. When one observes how humanity ever urges 
itself onward toward realization, he sees how valuable it is 
to lend his will to the general ethical tendency as this in- 
volves all his interests, and how vain it is to seek satisfac- 
tion in any other way. Where happiness enters in to color 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 335 

the life of the value-seeking subject, it appeals to him as an 
evidence that he has found the one ethical reality, and in this 
august form of judgment the felecific element is totally sub- 
merged. * 

4 THE WORLD OF VALUES 

The final considerations incident upon our view of value 
as ethical sanction lead us to inquire in what way the cate- 
gory of value expresses reality; indeed, such a question has 
been implied in the whole course of the discussion. Value 
we regarded as a category not inferior to the ancient "good" 
and modern "duty", and an examination of its inner nature 
showed us how conceptual was its being. The psychological 
view of value as the desirable could not exclude a certain 
element of idealism whereby actual desire was transformed 
into something worthy, while the ethical estimate of the 
principle became unintelligible upon any other basis than 
that of a realm of real values. Few of our ethical ideals 
are capable of such cosmic construction, and we feel that 
neither thought nor language bears us out when we attempt 
to speak of a "world of pleasures" and a "world of utilities", 
or a "world of virtues" and a "world of duties." In spite 
of the difficulties that obstruct the path to philosophic world- 
hood, the principle of value seems able to detach itself from 
the immediate consciousness of man and assume a position 
in the ethical world-order, and the many questions provoked 
by this view only serve to increase our confidence in the 
category of value. 

To effect the ontological construction of the value-prin- 
ciple, our thought must advance from the ideal of inness, 
which has enabled us to isolate value in consciousness and 
place it in the realm of ethics, to the totality of value in the 
world of humanity. To be worthy it must be the one and 
all; that is, it must be inner and universal. In the instances 
of Plato and Fichte we find forms of a moral world-order 
produced under the influences of classicism and romanticism 
respectively; one speaks of a "world of ideas", not only 
metaphysically permanent, but morally perfect, while the 
other lays his emphasis upon an "ethical world-order'' of 
striving egos. They agree that in the midst of external 



336 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

phenomena there is a realm of moral reality, not unlike tiie 
world of values now under consideration. Reality is a de- 
mand put forth by the consciousness of humanity in its striv- 
ing toward perfection; for unless our values stand for reali- 
ties they cannot be binding upon us. Fortunately, we are 
not called upon to create the world of values either by in- 
tellectual positing or volitional action. The world of hu- 
manity enveloping us is the world of values, and needs only 
further recognition to make possible its interpretation in 
terms of worth. 

The world of humanity came into clear relief when we 
discussed the ultimate nature of conscience with its sense of 
remorse and warning against resentment, feelings whose 
meaning seems inexplicable upon any other than an ontologi- 
cal basis. Without re-stating the propositions that outlined 
our thought then, we may simply suggest that the contrast 
between personal values set up by the individual in some 
moment of private interest are so submerged by the enduring 
values of the human order that man cannot escape from a 
sense of compunction. He who attacks this human order 
tfoon becomes aware that it envelops him without and per- 
vades him within so that his whole life is characterized by it, 
and the pangs of remorse as well as the impulse away from 
resentment reveal its inherent power. The world of human- 
ity, however, would not so affect man unless at the same 
time it was a world of values, whose security was being 
threatened by the craft or violence of the individual; hence 
the complete explanation of conscience involves something 
more than a metaphysical world of forms whose influence 
over man would be naught in an ethical sense. The human 
coloring that is found in the order of humanity is due, there- 
fore, to the fact that this world is a world of the good and 
beautiful as well as of the real and true. Therefore he who 
chooses the path of rectitude is inwardly inspired by the idea 
that he can sustain no real loss by his conduct. 

This leads us to the idea of eternal justice implicit in con- 
science and non-resentment, in rectitude and duty. Indeed, 
the notion of justice seems to inhere in the deeper principle 
of a single order of human life in which right and wrong 
shall receive recognition and reward; for assuming the unity 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 337 

of humanity we may assert that virtue and vice react upon 
the doer of good and bad deed and effect the compensatory 
results which justice seeks to promote. Some sense of identi- 
ty in the midst of the world of individual persons seems 
inseparately connected with the idea of rendering to each 
what is due. Such a recognition of eternal justice appears in 
Vedanta with its idea of a single Self inhabiting the uni- 
verse, of Platonism which cannot relate the virtue of justice 
to any form of the cosmos or any class of men, and in Christ- 
ianity with its fundamental principle of the Kingdom of 
God. From the standpoint here assumed, it seems as though 
this inner order were only a world of permanent values as- 
serting itself in connection with the special virtue of justice, 
as this is naturally adapted to convey the intrinsic worth of 
the human realm. 

By means of eternal justice manifest in the human order, 
we are able to postulate a conservation of values in the uni- 
verse of persons. And hereby the vicious individual, who 
vainly thinks to gain at the expense of another, experiences 
an equivalent amount of loss in the form of ideal, if not 
real, suffering, although he himself may not understand the 
inner meaning of his unhappy condition. At the same time, 
the man of virtue, who fears that the adherence to the ideal 
may cause him to suffer loss in a world of seflish purposes, 
is made to feel that in spite of apparent injustice his position 
is secure, inasmuch as value is real and the attempt to pro- 
mote it cannot really come to naught. Both are hemmed in 
by humanity; both are subject to the principle of value as 
this is kept up in the midst of change in the world of ap- 
pearance. It is upon such a basis that ethics may counsel 
man to seek virtue and shun vice; not because these will 
immediately reappear and reward him in forms of pleasure 
and pain, but because in the world of human reality value is 
so conserved that virtue can never lose and vice never gain. 
All blind transgression on the part of the malicious person 
is carried on in defiance of this universal law, so that the 
very vehemence of vice seems to be occasioned by the in- 
stinctive desire to overcome the detention, of reflective reason. 
On the other hand, moral skepticism with its longing to see 
the realization of justice in the world of things and persons 



338 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

has at heart the belief that value should be conserved amid 
all the mutations incident upon individual action, a belief 
which thwarts itself through an innocence that looks for 
such realization immediately in the phenomenal order. Trad- 
itional views of morality, like hedonism and intuitionism, 
fail to account for ethical faith, since one tries to relate all 
ethics to experience where the other contents himself with a 
negative view in default of a proper ground for moral 
striving. * 

5 THE WORLD OF VALUES AS MORAL GOAL 

In the world of values the human soul receives proper in- 
terpretation as something which by virtue of its selfhood has 
the value of worldhood, a truth which unites Vedanta and 
Christianity. Hereby man learns to know himself, that is 
to value himself not personally, but as a member of the 
supreme order of human beings. This position in the world 
of values invests his life with a new meaning by pointing 
out his ethical destiny in the universe. Naturistic ethics 
never recognizes the moral vocation of man, but sees in him 
a creature looking for immediate well-being in the percept- 
ible world ; characteristic ethics knows that man has a spirit- 
ual calling but itself is powerless to define this. In the idea 
of value we find an explanation of both the being and 
activity of man in his human consciousness, and are able to 
indicate the sense of living and striving. The valuational 
principle also aligns a goal for man in his human order. 
Conduct is a path in which desire is limited where duty is 
limitless, so that man strives beyond the one while he can 
never reach the other. The worth of life, however, is a 
principle which adapts itself to every moral act just as in- 
timately as does pleasure ; indeed, value is more faithful than 
happiness in its treatment of virtue so that its practical signi- 
ficance cannot easily be overestimated. From the idealistic 
standpoint, value like rectitude rises above the actual per- 
formance of morality and acts as a norm beyond the im- 
mediate power of the will. Hence man fulfills and yet does 
not fulfill the demands of the moral law, in the form of an 
ever-realizing principle of living worth wherein the idea 
both accompanies and transcends the work of the will. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 339 

The world of values enveloping and transcending the in- 
dividual is a just metaphysico-moral ideal which further 
makes possible the element of ethical progress of humanity. 
Hence the "transvaluafron of values", which is now such an 
agitating question, is a moral process wholly in keeping with 
the striving of humanity, as this continuously advances toward 
completeness. To inaugurate the advancement of man from 
nature to culture, from animality to humanity, was to set 
in motion the transvaluing process that to-day is assuming 
such an acute form. The forms of morality that we have 
employed here to indicate the stages of human striving are 
only so many changes in the valuing attitude of the human 
spirit, as it first reposes in nature and then resorts to charac- 
ter. Finally, the attaining to humanism, where value is 
prized for value's sake, is only another form of inner trans- 
valuation. For this reason we are able to assert that trans- 
valuation, however untenable in a world of concrete pleasures 
or abstract virtues, is an essential part of a world of human 
values as this constantly expands while it enriches its moral 
content. Our very conception of the world of humanity as 
a world of values permits us to speak of these values as 
progressing and perfecting themselves in such a way as to 
bring about a unified transvaluation of all values. 

Only as our system of values assumes the form of world- 
hood are we able to explain and justify the obvious fact of 
moral change, wherein, if the good does not become the bad, 
it tends to pass away and assume another form. The prin- 
ciple of value is not embarrassed by these changes that enter 
in, since, by the unity and totality of its inherent worldhood, 
it makes possible a manifold of ethical phenomena based upon 
a single category of worth, as well as a continuous system of 
transmutation safe-guarded by the sense of a permanent value 
in the midst of all changes. Pleasure and virtue are at- 
tached to either sense or reason, but the conceptual and in- 
tuitive essence of value makes it possible for this principle to 
have permanence in the midst of change, and to be real 
metaphysically while it is desirable ethically. In the mani- 
fold of ethical experience, where moral consciousness assumes 
an indefinite number of forms included under the head of 
pleasure, utility, approval, rectitude, duty, and the like, there 



340 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

is a single value represented by these partial principles and 
reappearing in their several forms, so that the moral subject 
seeks the value of pleasure, utility, approving conscience and 
duty. Having found the sense of his moral striving to con- 
sist in value as an object of possession as well as pursuit, man 
resigns himself to the world of values as the only environ- 
ment able to contain and content his spiritual nature. 



IV 
HUMAN DIGNITY AS ETHICAL CATEGORY 

I THE DIGNITY OF THE INNER LIFE 

To find a place for dignity in the moral life of man it is 
not necessary to compare it with value for the sake of show- 
ing which is the superior. But this contrast was one which 
Kant could not refrain from making as will appear from 
the following: "Whatever has a value can be replaced by 
something else which is equivalent; whatever, on the other 
hand, is above all value, and therefore admits of no equiva- 
lent, has a dignity" (Meta. d. Sitten, S. 64). For the 
furthering of this notion of dignity, as well as for emphasiz- 
ing the humanism of Kant, we may recall the famous practi- 
cal imperative which rises far above the purposeless categori- 
cal imperative of the autonomous system. "So act as to 
treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of 
another in every case as an end and never as a means only" 
(Meta. d. Sitten, S. 57). Had Kant's ethics not ignored 
teleology but had rather realized the possibilities of this 
human imperative it would have emphasized the importance 
of his mission and raised his "Critique of Practical Reason" 
to the level of the "Critique of Pure Reason." 

The ontological dignity of man manifests itself in the 
supreme fact of his inner life, whereby we are able to as- 
sert, "Man is a world." Minor ethical theories do not 
grant him such worldhood but subsume him under some 
law whether of utility or moral interest. So thoroughly 
saturated are we with moralism that we do not remember that 
man produced the ethical just as we overlook the fact that he 
is superior to his moral maxims. If man be wholly under 
the law his dignity is lost and instead of being a whole he 
is only a part. We cannot wholly moralize man since his 
being and culture involve other than purely ethical consider - 

341 



342 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ations, as science and art, religion and politics. The ordi- 
nary view of man violates his dignity and makes him a mere 
moralist, who lives his life and has his culture only by 
courtesy of the categorical imperative. The proper view of 
man surveys him according to his human dignity, whereby 
his inner humanity transcends all particular phases of being; 
whether in the realm of conduct or culture. Hence ethics 
must take its place by the side of other forms of human 
activity, as these all lie beneath man himself in the supremacy 
of his spiritual nature. Man owes nothing to the world 
that he should seek to realize himself in the performance of 
duty; and the world owes naught to man, as though the 
majestic universe existed for the sake of satisfying human 
desire; but man has an inner dignity which raises him above 
the phenomenal world of things and persons and in this 
superior order he is expected to realize his genuine being. 
This may be called either Sattva-Guna or humanity, and the 
true dignity of man's soul consists in realizing himself as a 
being of inner rather than of outer life. 

This view of the inner dignity of man takes the place of 
the rationalistic conception of Schiller in the essay on "Grace 
and Dignity", where grace is the perfection of sense and 
dignity the perfection of reason. Schiller seems to postulate 
a third form of spiritual life above dignity, as dignity is 
above grace; this appears as humanity or the harmonious 
perfection of the spirit. Nevertheless, the category of dignity 
is without a superior in expressing the inner character of our 
humanity, and as long as we secure the internal quality of 
dignity we need not resort to reason as its specific determi- 
nant which in Schiller's case made it seem as though dignity 
were not sufficient to contain the genuine essence of human 
life. 

Human dignity assumes another metaphysical form when 
the universality of man's life receives recognition. Both in 
idea and in act man has sought to relate his being to the 
world-whole. The Mahavakya of Vedanta which recasts 
the world in the form of Self, and the value-injunction of 
Christianity when it weighs the Soul against the world are 
august indications of man's universality. For this reason, 
thought and action must assume an unwonted largesse if 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 343 

man is to act in a thoroughly human capacity, if he is to be 
man as such. Of those who follow the general principles of 
ethics and love virtue for its own sake, as of those who are 
inwardly influenced by beauty and piety, it may be said that 
they are leading the universal life of human dignity, whose 
meaning is not perfectly clear to them, although its intrinsic 
value is recognized. They afford sufficient evidence of man's 
world-life even though they evince it in a negative fashion 
and in the spirit of unconsciousness, for they are seeking the 
ultimate and are content only with such experiences as have 
an inward verification. Man can make the world of human- 
ity in himself and in others an end toward which he strives 
with the one impulse of his life. 

2 THE DIGNITY OF ACTION 

The minor character of traditional ethics shows itself in 
connection with the question of action. Where action is 
given in experience, and man is viewed as though he could 
not exercise his will, it seems necessary only to order that 
action according to some particular principle like pleasure 
or rectitude. But this naive view of life fails to ask the 
question, What is action? Just as it takes the world as it 
finds it, and assumes life as a matter of course, so it here ac- 
cepts action without question. Major morality growing out 
of a unified view of life is guilty of no such neglect; it finds 
it necessary to ask, Why should man act? What is the true 
nature of his action? Our western world has ever assumed 
action as something necessary to man, but its point of view 
has been the naturistic one, which has made action no more 
important than animal locomotion. The Orient has been 
almost as ready to decide in favor of inaction as expressive 
of the highest wisdom, and we can no longer assume that 
ceaseless striving, whether in classic moderation or with 
romantic earnestness, is the only method of living. Too 
long have we taken action for granted and innocently as- 
sumed that only the life of labor was possible for man, while 
a far different idea has obtained in the east; where passivity 
has been the rule, activity the exception. Hence he who in 
a spirit of wisdom seeks happiness and human realization, 



344 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

strives to attain self-less inaction ; such is the spirit of Chinese 
conservatism. Taoistic nihilism yields the following com- 
ment from the writings of Kwang-sze: "I consider doing 
nothing to be the great enjoyment, while ordinary people 
consider it to be a great evil. Hence it is said, Perfect en- 
joyment is to be without enjoyment; the highest praise is to 
be without praise." (Bk. xvm). This word of wisdom 
is but the logical outcome of the Chinese conception of heaven- 
earth. Accordingly, it is said, "Heaven does nothing, and 
thence comes its serenity; earth does nothing and thence 
comes its rest. By the union of the two inactivities, all 
things are produced. All things in their variety grow from 
this inaction. Hence it is said, Heaven and earth do noth- 
ing, and yet there is nothing that they do not do. But 
what man is there that can attain to this inaction." (lb.) 
In the mind of the Taoist, the Tao stands for reality; ac- 
cordingly it is asked, How does one know the Tao, and how 
may he rest in it ? The reply is thoroughly inhilistic. "To 
exercise no thought and anxious consideration is the first step 
toward knowing the Tao; to dwell nowhere and to do noth- 
ing is the first step toward resting in the Tao; to start from 
nowhere and pursue no path is the first step toward making 
the Tao your own — He who practices the Tao, daily 
diminishes his doing — The perfect man is said to do nothing 
and the greatest sage to originate nothing, such language 
showing that they look to heaven and earth as their model." 
(Bk. xxn ). 

Oriental inaction appears again in the ideals of the Yoga 
and Sankhya philosophy as portrayed in the Bhagavad-Gita. 
The Sankhya school exalts a rule of knowledge and seeks to 
relieve the devotee of works by a process of sheer inaction 
(akarma). The Yoga school is based upon a rule of work, 
and finds in activity the field of its practical scheme of 
works. Hence the Yoga upholds an ideal of worklessness 
(naishkarmya) which is realized in both a positive and prac- 
tical manner. (Ch. in). Further consideration (Ch. v) 
of the problem leads the author to declare that, in spite of the 
apparent differences between the Sankhya system of know- 
ledge and the Yoga program of action, their doctrine of works 
is practically the same. Hence Krishna declares ( Ch. V. I ) , 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 345 

"Casting off of works and rule of works both lead to bliss; 
but of these the rule of works (Yoga) is higher than casting 
off works (Sankhya)." The superiority of Yoga is further 
indicated when the Deity affirms, "He who is doing works 
lays his works on Brahman and puts away attachment is not 
defiled, as the lotus-leaf is unsullied by the water." (Ch. v. 
10). Action is the cure of action, "for without undertaking 
works no man may come to worklessness" (Ch. III. 4). 
The key to this paradox seems to reveal itself in connection 
with the supreme Self in whose presence all work is set at 
naught. "But for the man whose delight is in Self, who is 
contented with Self, and is glad of Self, there is naught for 
which he should work." (Ch. ill. 17). Where this work 
is based upon the ego rather than the Self, it loses its merit 
and man fails to be released from toil. To those who seek 
relief from particular works, Krishma proffers this advice: 
"Casting of all thy works upon me with thy mind on the 
One over Self, be thou without craving and without thought 
of a mine, and put away thy fever and fight." (Ch. m. 30). 
The essence of this doctrine of work seems to lie in the 
thought of a perfect deed performed by the soul in its total- 
ity, rather than some act of immediate moment in which the 
empirical ego engages. "He who beholds in work no work, 
and in no-work work, is the man of understanding among 
mortals — Free from attachment to fruit of works, everlast- 
ingly contented, unconfined, even though he be engaged in 
work he does not work at all" (Ch. iv. 18, 20). The man 
of Yoga thus renounces all personal desire, relinquishes all 
longing for the fruit of action and reduces all works to one 
vast spiritual deed-act. 

In the New Testament the plain doctrine of faith and 
works contains a similar truth and exhibits the same longing 
for freedom from prescribed acts that the soul may perform 
one full deed. One has only to recall Christ's criticism of 
those Pharisaical men of good work, and of those who sought 
to obtain eternal life by deeds, as well as St. Paul's violent 
attack upon the works of the law, to realize how impotent 
were common forms of activity in contrast with the supreme 
inner and mental deed of the believing soul. The feeble 
will is unable to acquire the supreme thing in life which is 



346 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

accepted fully in the innocence of faith, even at the risk of 
antinomianism. 

3 — ACTIVITY AS CREATIVE 

Why should man act? The answer to this question in- 
volves no physical principles of force or phychical elements 
of stumuli, which could only explain why man does act; it 
concerns the essence of spiritual life itself and the trend of 
human destiny. From the standpoint of mere action no 
answer can be given; for the inner inclination and the outer 
result are only the externals of that creative deed which man 
is called upon to perform. Mere doing will not avail ; and 
right for right's sake is as empty as right for pleasure's 
sake is blind. Minor morality may explain certain details 
of human action, but it cannot justify the never-ceasing ten- 
dency on the part of the soul to affirm itself, as though its 
life were possessed of a value in itself. The mystery of 
being is no less and no greater than the mystery of acting, 
for both are the same in inscrutability. Peer Gynt's Boyg- 
Sphnix answers the riddle of being by saying, "I am myself", 
but the riddle of action is left unsolved in the command. 
"Go round about" (Act n. sc. vn. cf. iv. xn; v, iv). 
From the abyss of nihilism the escape seems to lie in some 
newer and fuller conception of action, as also in some other 
categories than those of good-virtue, right-duty. The human 
deed must be made more creative as it is in both rights 
and religion, which to ethics may have seemed to be legalistic 
and superstitious. Perhaps the essence of ethics is such as 
to forbid the positive effects of these companion forms of 
culture which express themselves in court and temple, but 
morality must abandon the abstractness, the aristocracy which 
has so long vitiated its efforts toward the good. This may 
be done by recognizing the major morality with its world 
of values. 

The creative phase of our human striving is wholly in 
accord with the ideal of value. Man's moral calling con- 
sists in something more than affirmation of self by desire 
and negation of self through duty; it involves the creation 
of something worthy in the world of humanity. Hence the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 347 

moral commandment is no longer, "Do this" or "Be this", 
but "Create this," which is the spiritual self. Values can- 
not be made artificially as Hobbes assumed virtues were made 
by compact; these varies are created by culture, which ex- 
presses the striving of man toward humanity. In distinc- 
tion from, nay in opposition to, pagan culture, Christianity 
created values wholly new in the history of mankind. Now 
man is learning to strive after that wholeness which the an- 
cient possessed in immediacy. With antiquity it was an 
outer immediacy of form which accounts for the marvelous 
achievements in plastic; with modernity it is destined to 
become an inner immediacy, of self-existence revealed, per- 
haps, in the art of music. Major morality seeks to set man 
at one with himself, at one with the world, and it is for 
this unity of his total being that man as human should strive. 

Where such spiritual striving animates human creative 
endeavor, it is carried on for its own sake as though with- 
out it man could not become himself. We must not take 
action for granted as though man could not refrain from 
movement ; but we must exalt action to a proper place among 
the categories. It is this larger form of activity which man 
is to assume if he is to become noble; meanwhile, we must 
appreciate the largesse of the life-problem and refrain from 
turning morality into casuistry. Causal doing and substan- 
tial being are categories which hardly contain the totality of 
human effort. Action is to be determined in the light of 
human destiny not in connection with some immediate need 
or duty. 

The unconscious striving after totality in human action 
has produced more than one characteristic life-ideal. Plato- 
nic and Aristotelian men, who either participate in the Good 
or cooperate in the energy which is directed toward Virtue, 
are troubled about no such romantic striving after whole- 
ness of action. Our modern moralists strive after unity 
when they have set the soul at variance with itself. But- 
ler's division of human nature yields two leading motives 
which seem to work in perpetual, mutual conflict; they are 
self-love and conscience. Yet Butler's manipulation of them 
is so adroit as to bring him to this conclusion: "Conscience 
and self-love, if we understand our true happiness always 



348 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

lead us the same way." (Serm. in) and that which, as a 
metaphysical principle, brings about the unity of opposites 
is the pagan idea of nature whence they spring and toward 
which they incline by virtue of the maxim of life according 
to nature. Kant does not manifest such unity in his doctrine, 
yet he reveals even a greater need of it when his categorical 
imperative insists upon unified duty, while the hypothetical 
imperative consults inclination as the source and consequence 
as the outcome of action. (Meta. of Morals p. 37 st. seq.) 
Now, the totality of the deed Kant seeks to express apodicti- 
cally, as though pleasure and utility would mar man's moral 
perfection, and the energy with which he contends for the 
awful imperative is really a modern attempt to regain the 
lost unity of the soul. The contrast between the rigors of 
our modernity and the graces of classicism appears most 
distressingly, when we note with what smoothness and in 
what happy connection Aristotle avoids pleasure and utility 
in his easy conquest of virtue; for it is not in the study of 
duty, but friendship that the master of an elder age asserted 
the totality of man's life. (Eth. Nicom. Bk. vii-viii). 

Such a yearning for a fullness of the moral life and a 
synthetic form of ethical judgment passes over into the 
nineteenth century, whence it descends to us. In Fichte's 
reduction of all thinking and being to the primary impulse 
of self-activity, the wholeness of the human deed appears 
as a deed-act, — Thathandlung {Wissenschaftslehre § 1). 
Unfortunately, Fichte's rigorism does not permit him to un- 
fold this principle in an ethical form after the manner of a 
humanistic morale; nevertheless, the wholeness of human 
doing is expressed as a unum necessarium. Schopenhauer's 
major morality delivers him from the usual snares of both 
rigorism and hedonism, but the unity of human doing is 
tainted perhaps by a pessimistic and nihilistic ethics. Yet 
this morality of negation reveals its integral character when 
it adjusts the individual will to the totality of will in the 
world; and where art calls upon man, as a will-less subject, 
to contemplate the world-whole (Welt ah Wille, § 38), 
ethics imposes upon him the task of overcoming the world by 
negation of the will-to-live (§ 60). Thus he who con- 
templates aesthetically and renounces ethically has evinced 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 349 

the unity of his being, just as he has expressed the totality of 
his doing. The same striving for completeness of conduct 
appears in Spencer, who thereby raises his standpoint above 
that of evolutionary naturism. Conduct, so he urges, must 
be judged according to its causal connection with life (Data 
of Ethics, Ch. iv), and from this point of view egoism and 
altruism may be reconciled, inasmuch as they participate in 
the totality of life, which, now viewed in a relative fashion, 
is destined to become the subject of absolute ethics (Ch. 
xv ). More recently, Eucken has sought to set man at 
one with his spiritual life in his Die Einheit des Geisteslebens, 
(1888) and Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, 
(1896). His ideal of action is in the form of Vollthat, or 
Wesensthat, which is a complete deed performed by the Soul 
as such, in independence of outer forms of inner faculties 
{Einheit, S. 433). The destiny of human striving involves 
something more than either formalism or dynamism ; human- 
ity participates in W esensbildung , which has no analogy in 
either the 2esthetical views of the ancients or the physical 
conceptions of the moderns (Kampf S. 126, et seq; cf. S. 
39i). 

4 — COMPLETENESS OF ACTION IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 

Having seen how problematic is the essential nature of 
action, we are now in a position to judge concerning the rela- 
tive completeness of a human deed. This is to be found in 
the intellectual nature of man, or in the degree of conscious- 
ness with which the act is performed as well as the intelligible 
purpose held out before the will. There is no need of ini- 
tiating action in a creature like man, who is destined to 
strive in the realization of his humanity, but we are required 
to scan our conduct for the sake of seeing wherein its signi- 
ficance lies. Upon so doing it appears that man acts for 
the sake of thought; we do things in order to know things. 
Yet in both thinking and doing man shows himself to be 
more than his intellect or his will. 

The dignity of action is not calculated to exalt an un- 
warranted intellectualism, yet it decrees that action shall 
possess intelligence. Thus it is not so much the freedom of 



350 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

the will, which as an expression is redundant and paradoxi- 
cal, but the intelligence of the will for which ethics should 
contend. It is scientia which supplies potentia, and will, 
instead of being something in excess of causality, is of an 
entirely different order, being intelligent. Such is the 
notion implicit in the intelligible Freiheit of Kant-Schopen- 
hauer. The causal category and the conservation of energy 
are not violated, for what is added to the total performance 
is something of a purely intelligible nature; and a recogni- 
tion of unity in the midst of the cognitive, conative manifold 
puts human freedom beyond the domain of dispute. Aris- 
totelian energy of the soul according to virtue encounters 
no difficulties inherent in the categorical imperative. 

With all the attacks which philosophy makes upon truth, 
it is seldom that its critical weapons are turned against the 
good. Yet the skepticism which invades the intellect is 
likely to advance to the borders of will, for that which blinds 
the eyes may also paralyze the activities. Philosophy does 
avow its independence of the moral in the instances of both 
religion and art; one need read only Schleiermacher and 
Schiller to learn this. Art liberated itself from morality 
when aesthetics became an independent science: religion as- 
serted its freedom when it was placed in its proper field. 
Does it follow that culture is vicious because these fair and 
devout forms of spiritual life have serenely refused to suc- 
cumb to any absurd moralizing? Love and beauty, not 
works and laws, prevail in the realm where spiritual life is all 
grace and truth; and the humanity of man arises only as it 
surmounts the moral barrier. We are thus led to inquire 
concerning the value of the good and the worth of duty, 
ideals which can no longer be taken for granted. 

The achievement of one's inherent humanity is not by 
means of desire which is privative, or through duty which is 
negative. A complete and positive method of life is found 
only in conjuction with a third order of being which culti- 
vates man as such, or man in his human valuation. Hedonic 
self-realization is a vain attempt which confuses egoism with 
personality, only to end in the obliteration of the very in- 
dividual whose selfdom was so ardently sought. Rigoristic 
self-positing has a similar end in its domain; duty effaces 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 351 

self just as it thwarts humanity. Man is man in only a nega- 
tive sense; his humanity has not been attained in the zeal of 
his doing. We wonder whether we shall ever become human 
beings, and look with* despair upon the plans laid down by 
morality. Suppose we do realize the golden rule of utili- 
tarianism ? Shall we then find ourselves in the shining pres- 
ence of the world of humanity? Suppose we do obey that 
categorical imperative for whose fulfillment its author de- 
manded the eternal life of an immortal soul; shall we be 
human even then? The unity of man can never be attained 
by gratifying desires, however wisely, or by performing 
duties, however well; nor can it be found in the deeper 
moods when one through eudaemonism accepts the universe 
in its immediacy, or by renunciation repudiates it altogether. 
To posit man as human requires a central assertion on the 
part of the soul in its unity, for which reason our ideal of 
human dignity suffers us. not to surrender our inward being 
to the eccentric influence of naturistic desire or rationalistic 
duty. From within outward toward the world-whole, man 
must act if he he is to achieve humanity. Such a conception 
of world-work is not idle when the actual realization of life 
gives way before its inner idealization, for the history of 
humanity has shown how man may engage in cosmic toil. 
This is the sense of life indicated in Goethe's poem when 
the Spirit tells Faust of her work at the loom of time as she 
weaves the garments of God. 

The question concerning action not only involves the 
dignity of man but his sense of values, and in deciding the 
nature of a deed we must consider the inherent worth of life. 
The value of action is found in the totality of the deed per- 
formed, as well as the inner source whence it proceeds. 
What commonly passes as action differs from the deed of 
dignity inasmuch as it springs from something immediate as 
desire or duty, and aims at something external in the way 
of result. He who works because he has temporary inclina- 
tion or feels immediate moral constraint may not be said to 
act as the wise man of humanistic ethics. His act is tainted 
by interest, whether naturistic or characteristc, and he is far 
from that condition of things which the Bhagavad-Gita calls 
"the worklessness of works." In some such form of inner 



352 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

and universal activity we may hope to discover the nature of 
action; certainly we may assume that the traditional view 
of volitional activity is far removed from the ideal of human 
work. Our human calling involves a form of work different 
from instinctive activity put forth unconsciously except so 
far as its immediate purpose is concerned, and the dignified 
work of man raises him above the maxims of "greatest hap- 
piness" and "imperative duty", just as Plato's philosophers 
were raised above the workers and warriors of the Republic. 
To follow desire and to perform duty are common forms of 
activity; genuine work is rare. 

We may distinguish between the minor and major forms 
of action by applying a simple yet convincing test; that of 
the intellect. To call upon man to act is trite and unneces- 
sary ; but to bid him think about his action that it may become 
unified is ever necessary in a world of ordinary toil. It is 
this element of cognition that invests the expression "intel- 
ligible freedom" with a meaning unnoticed by Kant and 
Schopenhauer in their voluntarism ; man will be free, but his 
freedom can never possess the intelligible quality necessary to 
every dignified act. Such a factor of intelligence was im- 
plied when we discussed the systematic freedom of man. To 
act in perfect freedom is to act in perfect intelligence accord- 
ing to the ideal of intro-activity, and while we would be 
chary of intellectualism we do not hesitate to declare that 
the dignity of action cannot exist unless the deed be an in- 
telligible one. 

5 — THE INTELLECTUAL DIGNITY OF HUMANITY 

However vague our inquiry concerning action and its 
necessity may have been, the outcome is manifest; man acts 
for the sake of something intellectual so that his work as- 
sumes the form of intro-activity. Only the intellect of man 
is able to measure the meaning of life which otherwise would 
be a dream. Our human dignity forbids us to exalt the un- 
thinking man of action whose life finds its sense in deed, and 
calls upon us to postulate the superior man who lives an 
inner life, wherein action is only incidental and experimental. 
Only such a view could fulfill the ideals of a tertiary form 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 353 

of human life recognized as Sattva-Guna, as the "pneumati- 
cal men" or the humans of our modern systems. Only such 
an intelligible view of man can explain the continuity of 
human striving that culminates in a world of inner human- 
ity. Indeed, the original impulse on the part of humanity 
to assert itself in abiding contrast to nature must be inter- 
preted, not in a will that merely carries on the work of the 
natural order, but in an intellect that reproduces this in an 
intelligible form. 

The conflict between faciens and cogitans, which so rends 
the soul of the modern, is usually ascribed to the supposed 
weakness of the mind to conceive and not to the will's power 
to create. Why should doing be better and more satisfac- 
tory than thinking? What natural preference exists in 
favor of the motorium when contrasted with the sensoriumf 
In psychological circles, something has been done toward 
achieving unity of mind when consciousness is habitually con- 
ceived of in connection with activity; yet the result of this 
healthy tendency is usually accepted by voluntarism, which 
seeks to defend itself against an equally partial intellectual- 
ism, and is not credited to the unity of consciousness which 
ever keeps up a balance between its opposed functions. The 
history of humanity reveals the psychic distinction among 
men, and our value-judgments must proceed accordingly. 
Among the Greeks, who found an agreeable mean between 
conquest and contemplation, appeared contrasted types in the 
persons of Xenophon and Socrates, who advocate the deed 
and the thought respectively. Alexander finds something 
companionable in Aristotle and world-conquest affiliates with 
world-contemplation. Caesar's conquests are parallel with 
Cicero's culture and in modern times Napoleon and Hegel 
survey each other with mutual contempt. 

The question concerning the ultimate ideal is more 
ethical than metaphysical, and instead of looking to the ac- 
curacy of our psychology only we should consider also the 
adequacy of our ethics; so that by adjusting will and in- 
tellect in consciousness we may proceed to evaluate them in 
the field of moral ideals. Our sub-moral thought to-day 
flees to voluntarism in psychology and activism in life, as if 
man were of purely motor construction. It may have some 



354 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

sense of the consistency that accompanied the life-sense of 
antiquity, but it is more inclined to exalt the heedless dyna- 
mics of an era urged on by a blind striving, as if a live dog 
were better than a dead lion. Where we surrender our- 
selves to the ideal of activism we know not whither it may 
lead us. Schopenhauer was better informed and his advice 
to seek relief from servitude of the will-to-live is significant 
and involves the confession that will can neither contain 
man's being nor content his ethical nature. The activities 
of the present age, bringing about stupendous developments 
in the world of material economics, offer painful contrast 
to the weak and hesitating spirit of spiritual ethics which is 
content with traditional notions while powerless to formulate 
new ideals. It shows that the Master Builder "cannot climb 
as high as he builds." How contemptible we make our 
spiritual life when we speak of Pragmatism, seeming thus 
to rejoice in our mental blindness! What is it in our 
moderns that makes them refuse to account for anything in 
the world ? Is it the ideal of the cavalier reappearing in the 
garb of decadence, or the sordid contempt of a sensualized 
age? Apart from the question whether intellect or will is 
to crown the life of man, there can be no doubt that our 
present need consists in an ethical movement calculated to 
raise the intellect to something like the level of the will, 
and to achieve in thought what has been done in blind 
action. Since Kant we have been undergoing a revolution 
in keeping with which the will has sought, not only to free 
itself from intelligence, but to usurp the supreme place of 
reason. Such voluntarism produces, not life, but motion. 
The true picture of humanity portrays "still life" with its 
calm, its eternity. 

From the foregoing it will appear that thought and ac- 
tion are not to be subjected to such a contrast that one shall 
remove in favor of the other; for we cannot live without 
thinking or without acting. The more acceptable order of 
arrangement is found in connection with a vertical line where 
will assumes a place beneath intellect for which it prepares 
the way. By means of action, working in both negative and 
positive fashion, man becomes intellectualized, and when the 
inner meaning of his being is considered he sees how in- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 355 

complete his life would be without a contemplative view of 
it in its totality. Will works in an interrupted manner, 
building up life part by part, but never doing a complete deed 
able to express the whole substance of our human being; 
mind exerts a vast synthetic influence whereby it brings to 
a unity all the scattered elements of our life in one judg- 
ment. Therefore, action leads to thought, and thought to 
being. There is knowledge in the midst of activity, know- 
ledge of the will-to-live; and there is activity in the midst 
of thought, the energy of contemplation. 

Such an ontogenetic adjustment seems to be in accord 
with the individual's life. This begins voluntaristically 
and for a while exhibits only animal functions; but the 
development of humanity in the person is coincident with 
the dawning of consciousness and the preparatory move- 
ments of the will are computed in the perfected activities of 
the intellect. The source of man's life in will only sug- 
gests its outcome in intelligence, but the development of the 
inner life gradually reveals the change from instinct to in- 
tuition as the life-work of contemplation goes on within. 
Such is also the natural history of the race. Coming fresh 
from nature, man's earliest form of life is marked by acitivity 
which only gradually makes way for contemplation. This 
is the product of leisure. Even nature in her material forms 
has something more than a practical interest for man who 
finds the world to be, not a mere field of work, but a subject 
of reflection. If voluntarism were truly representative of 
man, we should have no art or science and our life would be 
all deed and conduct carried on without assignable purpose. 

Still another consideration must be made if the genuine 
purport of human striving is to be comprehended. This is 
not to introduce a third element into the controversy, but 
to allow a principle common to will and intellect to bring 
about a more complete harmony between them. Such a 
principle appears in consciousness. Only in the consciousness 
of his place in the universe, only in the inner consciousness 
of humanity can man realize himself. Let will be the begin- 
ning and intellect the end, and at last let all action be 
swallowed up in thought, man becomes human by means of 
his consciousness. A plant realizes itself in its organic form, 



356 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

an animal in dynamic movement accompanied by sufficient 
consciousness to direct it; but man passes beyond vegetation 
and organization to assume a spiritual character in the uni- 
verse. This he does through thought-consciousness; or by 
means of such inner realization as is able to unite his lower 
life of action with his higher life of thought. "In the begin- 
ning was the deed," at the end is the thought, but over all is 
consciousness, as the inner meaning of humanity. Where 
will realizes itself is in the domain of intro-activity whose 
essence is essentially contemplative. 

From the standpoint of humanity only such a conclusion 
seems warranted; for humanity is not an objective realm 
filled with material things upon which the will may exert 
its energies, but a subjective one where the activities of the 
mind may be fully realized within the domain where they 
arise. Humanity is not a perceptible order like flora or 
fauna, but a consciousness whose practical expression assumes 
an ideal form barely conserved in any given condition of 
civilization or culture. Within this realm of human values, 
man's life is to be realized, and while nature claims his voli- 
tions, humanity seeks its realization within his conscious- 
ness. Since man is destined to become human, by means of 
an inner realization that is independent of natural forms 
and forces, it must appear that such a goal is to be found 
in his inner consciousness rather than in some external fact 
known to reason or some objective deed carried on by the 
will. It is in form what Augustine called sensus interioris 
hominis (De civ. Dei, lib. xi. cap. 27) ; the ancients called it 
reason where moderns style it consciousness. It is simply 
life, although that term has an endless meaning when con- 
sidered from within according to consciousness. 

This does not lead us away from activity as a guiding 
principle, nor have we any desire to abandon the idea of 
striving that has aided us in interpreting lesser forms of the 
moral life. We desire only to point out, that human striving 
toward consciousness is not such as to terminate in a con- 
dition of things, wherein will triumphs over intelligence ac- 
cording to an alleged supremacy of practical reason, but an 
order of development according to which human activity 
turns from nature to spirit, from outer to inner, from multi- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 357 

plicity to unity. Such a condition of mind is not something 
immediate, but results only after striving with both nature 
and man himself. Where man does employ his will for the 
purpose of work it is ftot to lose himself either in his toil or 
its object, but to test his powers in their application to the 
forces of the order whence he come, and the ideal man is 
not so much like the ignorant laborer who cannot rise above 
his work, as he is like the scientist who touches the world 
lightly at certain strategic points for mere purpose of ex- 
periment. Such is the ideal of activity in nature. 

6 CULTURE AND CONDUCT 

In our search after the completeness of action that con- 
stitutes human dignity we encounter the problem of culture 
and conduct, wherein the respective values of intellectual 
and volitional activities are set forth. Any inquiry concern- 
ing the end of life, whether in thinking or in acting, must 
assume that the inferior forms of truth and virtue have been 
understood by the man who would realize his humanity, so 
that all we need to examine is the nature of the crowning 
work which characterizes the superior side of man's life. 
Thus we admit that as man must have some degree of know- 
ledge so he must also possess a certain amount of virtue, for 
life in the most ordinary sense of that term demands that our 
humanity shall exercise the mind according to truth and the 
will according to goodness. The minor conception of our 
being, therefore, seems ludicrous when it seeks to legislate 
and give us moral maxims calculated to promote the activities 
of thinking and doing when man will of himself pursue these 
as a matter of instinct within and necessity without. Nature 
beckons with an iron hand, and man must have some com- 
prehension of her course and some sense of obedience to her 
laws if he is to survive as a mere creature only ; so that we are 
not called upon to choose between wisdom and virtue whose 
presence are assumed in man, but between the culminating 
forms of life in either contemplation or conquest. 

Man as such has a life-work to perform, and our belief 
that man is by nature a creature who must strive after his 
realization leads us to inquire wherein that realization con- 



358 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

sists. Aristotle's immortal comment upon our human acti- 
vities finds a suggestive place at this juncture. "Are we to 
suppose, that while carpenter and cobbler have certain works 
and courses of action, man as man has none, but is left by 
nature without a work?" (Eth. Nic. I. v). Our human 
work of dignity, wherein the totality of life is involved, can 
be no instinctive duty-doing, desire-fulfillng work of car- 
penters and cobblers, but an inner and universal form of 
activity which alone makes man a human being; and in the 
attempt to indicate the meaning of our existence as also to 
show wherein man is most likely to be successful, we turn 
away from the will except in so far as its contents is intelr 
lectual in the human work of contemplation. Such an ideal 
proposed and yet repudiated by eudaemonism is here resumed 
and in conscious departure from immediacy and in deliberate 
abandonment of mere work, we cast our vote in favor of 
the culture of humanity rather than the cultivation of the 
garden, for the former satisfies where the latter only stupe- 
fies. 

Another reason for believing in culture as the goal of 
humanity is the persistent attempt on the part of the world 
to understand its being; nature denaturizes itself in pro- 
ducing the human brain. By means of this cerebral device 
the secret of nature is exploded; for the human under- 
standing reacts upon nature, declares matter to be unreal 
and reconstructs the world according to a mental plan of 
logical law and metaphysical category. After all, it was a 
human hand which carved the face of the Sphinx and 
man holds the key to the mystery of the world which were 
no problem but for him. Things exist for the sake of 
knowledge and man was born not only to do and to suffer, 
but to study and to know. The constant pursuit of knowl- 
edge either as a means of happiness (Aristotle) or as a 
way to power (Bacon), the intrinsic satisfaction which 
knowledge brings, convinces us that the homo sapiens is a 
favorite child of humanity which cannot exist without him. 
Human life shows how man was put into the world to 
work, whether in Eden to cultivate the garden, or in the 
world to till the soil ; but the voluntaristic life-ideal is usually 
urged when the intellectualistic one seems to fail and the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 359 

life of labor cannot be the highest ideal for a creature who 
can accomplish more with his intellect than with his will. 

That man was meant for knowledge is confessed by the 
greatest of voluntasists — Schopenhauer. This radical 
thinker really gives us more than he promises in his WilU 
zum Leben, and perhaps that is because he saw how man 
was not satisfied with the acquisition and persistence of life. 
The will aims at something more than life just as it seeks 
to produce something more than the man of nature. Ac- 
cordingly, the content of the term 'life' is filled out with 
intellectual elements; where the will-to-live is denied the 
will-to-know is left undisturbed. By means of knowledge 
man is led to contemplate the world as artist while ultimate- 
ly he renounces it as moralist ; the triumph is the triumph of 
reason by which the will in its blindness is first quieted and 
then extinguished: thus the outer forces of nature and the 
inner volitions of man unite to evoke human reason that the 
world may be understood and life rationalized, and man as- 
sumes his place in the universe of nature and humanity only 
by accepting the responsibilities of the intellect. The action 
of the will, however necessary to human life it may be, 
seems to carry out the plan of nature in making and keep- 
ing man a creature; it is the intellect that unifies his being 
and adjusts him to his spiritual center in the world-whole of 
nature-humanity. Man himself may be in nature as a link 
in the chain of beings, and if it were not for reason he 
would never know his humanity and the problem of life; 
but the day-spring of intellection reveals the position man is 
destined to occupy and the function he is to perform, and he 
who becomes aware of his spiritual vocation trusts less to the 
will and more to the intellect, as "he who practices the Tao 
daily diminishes his doing." Only through the contempla- 
tive work of mind can man achieve dignity. 

Voluntarism can give only the shell of human life whose 
kernel is found in reflective consciousness. The will indeed 
does have some genetic significance in determining the general 
bent of human life, for man's earliest forms of mentality 
concern themselves with simple movements having at heart 
the preservation of the individual. At the same time, the 
will bears some relation to the purpose of life, in that man 



3 6o VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

constantly sets before his mind some practical goal necessary 
to the work of life. But these arguments only concern the 
naturistic or characteristic forms of man's being, for they 
do not take into consideration the ideal aspect of his being 
or the totality of his life. We do possess volition, but that 
is not to say it possesses us; and the will is our servant 
rather than our master. Therefore, of the two functions of 
our being, the conduct of the will and the culture of the 
reason, we may assume that the purpose of life, while it 
towers above both of these in all the supremacy of inner and 
universal spiritual life, is expressed in terms of culture 
rather than by means of conduct. All attempts at activism 
or pragmatism are sure to ignore the universality of Man's 
spirit and the ultimate purpose of his being. 

The pragmatic view of man ignores human dignity for 
it reduces man to nature and thus envolves a reversion to 
type. With all the vile insinuations of Nietzsche there is 
something more heroic in the "blond beast" of Aryanism 
than in the moralistic, Semitic beast of burden who is in- 
different to the intellectual value of humanity and encour- 
ages reason to turn against itself. Pragmatism calls upon 
man to live without ideals and in our present condition of 
activistic excess it is crafty enough to appeal to the prejudices 
of an unsuspecting public. The paganism of Aristotle's 
ideal of "great-mindedness" — which adorns the whole moral 
life of man, stands out in marked contrast to such Semitism 
as tends to envelop our present-day philosophy. Still more 
annoying does this form of philosophy become when it 
seeks to make the maxims of the human will the motto of 
the universe and looks for the premises of thought in the 
postulates of action. Our universe is a thought-universe, 
our life a life of culture. The appeal to a voluntaristic 
metaphysics and a pragmatic morality only veils the con- 
fession that our age cannot stand the light of thought and 
self-consciousness. We abandon the stately intellectualism 
of Apollo for the activism of Dionysus, not realizing that 
the god of passion was hardly one remove from sensuality. 
So our activism in both theory and practice binds us again 
to earth when all humanity cries out for deliverance from 
sense that it may strive toward inner self-hood. Let many 
run to and fro, but let knowledge be increased in the land. 



V 
THE DIGNITY OF SELFHOOD 

Just as the characteristic view of life with its norms of 
rectitude and duty triumphed over the naturistic principles 
of pleasure and utility, so our humanistic ideals of value and 
dignity must rise above all these standards of minor morality 
and treat man in his totality. Our treatment of these other 
principles has shown how implicit is humanity as such in 
every stage of our being's progress. The paradox of pleas- 
ure and the essence of desire, the search after utility and 
eudaemonia are only so many imperfect forms of our human 
striving while the psychology of conscience and the ethics of 
rectitude, the origin of freedom and the ground of duty, are 
inexplicable except as expressions of a self-perfecting spirit 
of humanity. Thus is humanity justified of her children, 
who should not seek to assume the highest place, as though 
pleasure or conscience could rule man, but should rather 
admit the origin and submit to the authority of the spirit in 
and behind them. For humanity itself, it becomes necessary 
to assert superiority over both nature and man, and thus 
rise above the world of single things and the world of in- 
dividual persons. In ethics there arises the problem of in- 
dividualism in both ego and alter, and this must be adjusted 
to humanity as a system. 

Our ideals of value and dignity now aid us in determin- 
ing the status of the individual, especially after the culmina- 
tion of the discussion upon our human dignity has led us to 
see how man comes to himself in cognition rather than in 
conation, whereby we are now able to intellectualize in- 
dividuals and attribute to them their proper humanity. This 
should place the problem of egoism and altruism in a new 
light and make it possible to grant to each its rights by 
granting these to neither; that is, in its isolation from the 
human order enveloping it. The problem of ego-alter has 

361 



362 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

always been taken up by naturistic hedonism and 
practically never by characteristic intuitionism, and that 
because the one was aware of the moral content in desire 
while the other saw only the form in duty. But by what 
right should naturism, which knows the principle of indivi- 
duation instead of genuine personality, usurp the office of 
individualism and seek thus to define ego and alter and re- 
late them to each other? Our criticism of both egoism and 
altruism taken up in PART TWO of this work was intended 
to show how futile is the attempt to construct the ego upon 
a hedonic basis where self-assertion is the meaningless ani- 
malism of the "Gyntish self"; and where rigorism de- 
sensualizes man humanism re-spiritualizes him and makes 
genuine personality possible. He who has Tamas-guna has 
no real ego ; he who finds Sattva-guna comes to self -conscious- 
ness only to use this for a higher purpose. 

I — THE STRIVING FOR HUMAN SELFHOOD 

Through the ego, humanity strives to realize the inness 
of spiritual life, since consciousness cannot complete its work 
until it has achieved a unity in personal existence. For this 
reason, egoism in some form is a necessary phase of human 
life, and maxims counselling the destruction of selfhood 
through self-denial and self-effacement seek to take away 
the inner sense of man's being and are of value only when 
striving for selfhood sinks downward to the world of nature. 
The man of humanity should be more and not less of a 
person; he should be more and more centripetal in his act- 
ivity. Encouraged by Butler's example, we feel justified 
in saying that genuine self-love is so weak that it stands in 
need of internal furtherance on the part of the ego who 
should see that his human calling demands the development 
of a personality in the deeper sense of that term. 

Between ego and humanity there is so close a connection 
that it deserves direct recognition. When we turn to dis- 
cuss man's sense of human worldhood in the social order, it 
will be time enough to speak of man in his sympathetic capa- 
city as altruist: here we must recognize man in his superior 
character as person and human aristocrat. Is humanity ad- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 363 

vanced by the genius or by the mass ? Is the sense of human- 
ity created by the beautiful soul who appears at rare inter- 
vals or by the average man whom we have ever with us? 
However we may hesitate to exalt the egoistic in man, we 
cannot deny that humanity is not to be evinced apart from 
some form and degree of egoism, for without the individual 
humanity is empty. It is only by means of self-consciousness 
that the inness of humanity can find expression, just as it is 
only by the self-positing of the ego that humanity is able 
to strive for selfhood. 

On what basis can man be himself? On what founda- 
tion raise the structure of human selfhood? Hedonism pro- 
poses an "ego" filled with self-love as the most obvious form 
of private being; intuitionism offers the "free moral agent 1 ' 
who surrenders his interests to his scruples and in seeking 
to efface the coarse egohood of nature abandons all hope of 
finding the principle of his inner life. Selfhood is a human 
affair and where man is allied with, first, a naturistic, and 
then a rationalistic form of existence, he has no chance to 
display his genuine self. One should strive after selfhood, 
not make it something to be seized through sense as though 
personality consisted in pleasure; he should make it some- 
thing positive, however, and not imagine that it could come 
to him through the conscientious denial of human values. 
The organization of our inner life through selfhood involves 
both elements of sense and spirit whereby man makes him- 
self out of the materials nature affords him. Such, a self 
is a genuine ego whose character is not empirical but intelligi- 
ble, not outward assertion but inward affirmation. 

The path to personality has ever been obstructed by the 
minor systems of egoism and altruism. Both seek to exalt 
the empirical person who is viewed first from within as ego, 
without as alter ; as a result the dignity of man as an intelligi- 
ble person is violated and the hope of achieving selfhood is 
lost. This condition of affairs produces a false disjunction 
and when man is placed between egoism and altruism he can- 
not make a satisfactory choice of character in terms of self- 
love or self-sacrifice. The dignity of humanity must be 
established in some other way than the empirical one pro- 
posed by the hedonistic school, for one cannot love himself 



364 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

or deny himself unless there be some genuine selfhood as the 
basis of operations. To evince the self in mankind it be- 
comes necessary to effect a greater contrast than that between 
ego and alter ; spirit must be set off against matter, humanity 
against nature and personality delivered from the fetters of 
conventionality. This is the only consistent meaning that 
attaches to the morality of genius whereby artistic souls, who 
are raised above nature find ethical recognition. Man was 
meant to be superior and he who can demonstrate the calling 
of humanity is of more value than a whole race of altruists 
who only continue the common work of the world without 
imparting any spiritual significance. The genius teaches 
us that man was meant for humanity, for genius is passion 
for humanity and deserves to be fostered by a moral system 
which has at heart the total interests of human life. 

The dignity of humanity thus demands something more 
than egoism and altruism; it raises man above a life accord- 
ing to nature and a life according to reason, to a life in 
humanity. Here a full personality, conscious of its position 
in the world, alive to the problem of its life, transcends all 
the pettiness of ego and alter and seeks humanity as its goal. 
Man's supreme concern is neither for the self or the not- 
self but for humanity as such, and the great commandment 
is not, Love thyself, or, Love the not-self, but, Cultivate 
humanity. The alter-ego will receive his share of considera- 
tion at the hands of the self-realizing ego, for one cannot 
fulfill his mission in a world of humanity without persons; 
but the alter will lose his private characteristics and stand 
for humanity, as the model reveals the characteristics of the 
human form; and he who loves another and furthers his 
interests is devoting himself to the intelligible ego who re- 
presents the universal, rather than to the empirical ego who 
stands only for the individual. By serving a few characteris- 
tic souls in a symbolic fashion man fulfills his duty toward 
humanity without sinking into either egoism or altruism: 
In the dialectic of Fichte this symbolic relation between one 
person and another assumes the systematic form of Ich and 
Nicht-Ich where, from the physical point of view the exter- 
nal world is only a non-ego. Yet it is only by accomodation 
that the individual person assumes the role of the Ich whose 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 365 

essence is that of the objective Self. By parity of reasoning 
the alter may become representative of the whole Nicht-Ich 
as he does in the ethics of Fichte, as shown in the Rechtshpil- 
osophie. Hence the ego plays the part of the Ich, the alter 
that of the Nicht-Ich, just as the character of Cain is deter- 
mined altogether by his attitude toward Abel, that of Judas 
by his treatment of Jesus. In a genuine moral relation the 
ordinary relations of person to person give way to a decisive 
conflict between one phase of humanity and another. 

Let it not be thought that, with all its warmth of hu- 
manitarian interest, Christianity counsels altruism as such. 
The love of the world-neighbor and the special duty toward 
the needy are made a part of this practical system of spirit- 
ual life, but the idea of redemption so towers above these 
details that the altruistic is lost sight of. Christianity finds 
no abiding difficulty in the egoistic problem, because as a 
form of spiritual religion it seeks to discover the individual 
value of the soul and has no interest in the alter-ego when 
he is surveyed in a purely naturistic way. Some such idea 
must have inspired Butler to postulate "reasonable self-love" 
as a principle of ethics about on the same level as conscience. 
But behind the lofty method of the Gospel lies the thought 
that the empirical world of persons, like the phenomenal 
world of things, is not the world of loves and values, so that 
no amount of altruism can atone for want of spiritual in- 
sight and purpose. Practical benevolence is only the sign of 
the abiding love of spirit, which ever turns from <£iA.€g> to 
dAcwrao) and raises man above ego and alter in a central and 
consuming love of the All, or what Schleiermacher called 
"sense and taste for the Infinite" {Redenuber die Religion, 
II). 

2 CONTEMPLATIVE EGOISM 

The striving for selfhood is an internal movement in 
which the individual seeks to adjust himself as person to the 
human world-order. Having seen how just and necessary 
is a certain kind of egoism we must further inquire how man 
can best attain to selfhood, and thus acquire human dignity. 
Our conception of man's dignity decides this for us and we 
are thus led to assume that it is through intellect rather 



366 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

than through will that man becomes himself and attains to 
selfhood, so that his egoism is the egoism of contemplation, 
not that of conquest. The ego of action cannot bear the 
burden of selfhood, and the ontological dignity of man 
makes necessary an ego capable of self-consciousness and 
self-affirmation in the form of spiritual life. The intellect 
furnishes apparently the only secure means of realizing per- 
sonality and when, in response to Kant's injunction we seek 
to treat the humanity of both ego and alter as an end, we 
turn to man's mental life as the only possible condition of 
such an achievement. Because of his dignity, man must be 
a person, and both dignity and personality are found in 
intellectualism and the work of contemplation. 

Could the ego be looked upon as a finished product 
existing in his own world, our contention for selfhood would 
be unnecessary and improper; then we were cultivating 
selfishness indeed. Genuine egoism, however, needs further- 
ance, inasmuch as man in his impirical capacity has not at- 
tained to the stature of selfhood. How this achievement is 
to come about involves major rather than minor ethics. 
Right here we must observe that, since humanity has habit- 
ually accepted substitutes for self, our common condition is 
one of sub-egoism, so that we stand in need of strong moral 
motives urging us to fill out the proportions of our personal 
nature. And this can be done only by a deliberate striving 
after selfhood as something to be desired rather than dreaded. 
Religion teaches man to be "innocently solicitious for self", 
as Hutcheson (Inquiry, Sect. in. vi) put it, just as religion 
is itself a form of striving after personal existence as a soul. 
Culture has the same motive and while not a mere culte du 
moij in the sense of Maurice Barres, it is no impersonal 
ideal. Experience shows how deeply mankind stands in need 
of the free, creative personality, who works as he lives, from 
within. Such an ideal is the crystalization of human striving 
after selfhood. 

The naturistic attempt at selfhood was seen to be a fail- 
ure, inasmuch as it was based upon sense in the vain attempt 
to rear personality upon the foundation of pleasure. Thus it 
detached a solitaire, but could not develop a spirit; it cele- 
brated the dance of Dionysius, but did not worship Apollo. 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 367 

Nevertheless, naturism deserves credit for having inaugu- 
rated egoism with its suggestion that the person as such is of 
value and worthy of consideration in thought, and since man's 
life and man's world are apprehended through his own ego 
the doctrine of self-love is to be blamed for its bluntness and 
superficiality only. Since man is destined for full humanity, 
egoism is of worth in showing how inherent in the human 
order is the unit of personality. Yet there is a more ac- 
ceptable form of the doctrine consisting in intellect rather 
than sense ; it is the contemplative form of selfhood in which 
humanity realizes itself with the highest degree of perfec- 
tion. The striving of humanity to attain realization is for- 
ever balked unless the individual be allowed to represent the 
world in his thought and react upon it according to his will. 
All genuine culture thus aims to emancipate the individual 
that the mystery of the world and the enigma of life may 
be presented directly to a self-conscious subject of con- 
templation. This thinking ego is worthy of more considera- 
tion and capable of more development than the feeling ego, 
which seeks to receive the world directly as to content with- 
out attempting to analyze it according to form. 

Humanistic egoism reduces hedonic egoism to a mere 
shadow, for in its intellectual form it involves the metaphy- 
sical in man. Just as the Christian Soul is weighed against 
the value of the world-whole, so the Vedantist Self is sub- 
stituted for the entire universe, and in their combined forms 
of Semitic and Aryan culture they present a perfect view of 
human selfhood. Vedanta looks upon the world as though 
it were pervaded by the Self, and that so perfectly that all 
reality becomes mental and the "That" becomes a "Thou", 
the "Tat" a "Tvam", in the great text, "Tat tvam asi." 
There are no separate individual things, but a supreme Self 
alone exists; there are no isolated persons but one indwelling 
Self. He who would know nature and humanity must view 
it through the Self in which all phenomena, physical and 
psychical, are centered. By such metaphysical means human- 
ity appears in the crystallized form of selfhood, and the 
striving after self-realization, instead of being egoistic, be- 
comes humanistic, for it urges the individual to achieve his 
inherent humanity in the Apollonian sense. 



368 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

The objective ego upon whose basis personality is to be 
erected makes possible the selfhood of spirit in contrast to 
the selfhood of sense; hereby man learns to distinguish him- 
self from the natural order about him as well as from the 
inner order of phenomena. As Heraclitus sought diligently 
to find himself, so Socrates, in contrast to the Sophistical 
Protagoras, tried to put selfhood upon the basis of know- 
ledge. To the hedonist these speculative attempts at egoism 
come as a surprise since the hedonist can conceive of the 
personality of man as a mere matter of private interest. 
Upon the basis of the Christian "Soul", Augustine sought a 
principle of inner experience in the self-consciousness and 
self-existence of the individual (Beata vita, 7; Solil. II, 1), 
while Descartes repeats the argument for selfhood in the 
well-known cogitOj ego sum. Belief in the self as a specula- 
tive principle was furthered by Fichte's self-positing "Ich" 
whose essence consists in striving in opposition to the world. 
Such dialectics prepare the way for a genuine view of self- 
hood and indicate that the hedonic self of sense furnishes no 
basis for human personality. The new ego is no creature of 
sense but a character of reason; emancipated from nature he 
asserts his human dignity by affirming himself as person. 

3 THE EGO AND HIS INDIVIDUALITY 

Just as the hedonic ego cannot maintain his character 
as individual in contrast with nature, so he fails to distinguish 
himself from the mass of men about him: hence some other' 
than a theory of selfhood in self-love becomes necessary if 
man is to rise above both natural and social orders. The 
dignity of man depends upon individualism, but such a prin- 
ciple must be put upon a sufficient basis. The old ego of 
immediate rather than remote self-assertion, of sense rather 
than reason, cannot endure in the midst of criticism, and to 
be a person, to have a soul, to live according to major moral- 
ity, demands a superior form of selfhood. Schopenhauer 
was right in pointing out the fallacy of an egoism based upon 
the principle of individuation which deludes man into the 
belief that he is distinct from the rest of the world ( Welt als 
Wille u Vorstellung, § 61); but his counsel to repudiate 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 369 

this phenomenal self without a further attempt at person- 
ality is on a par with his renunciation of the will-to-live so 
far as all life is concerned. Man must live; his life must 
be human ; his humanity depends upon his selfhood. Human 
dignity means distinction and upon no false basis of self- 
destroying altruism is man expected to cast off his very soul. 
The naturistic commandment to seek the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number, and the characteristic injunction to 
act so that the maxim of one's conduct may become universal 
law, are inimical to selfhood, and for this reason, if for no 
other, we turn away from the minor morality of maxims 
to the major morality of values. No hero, no artist, no 
saint could realize himself with such restrictions, with ideals 
which are those of barbarism. 

Current attempts to attain selfhood are well-meaning 
but one-sided and have only a critical value in indicating 
how un-individualized is our society. The retreat from 
convention is carried on well enough, but the reconstruction 
of the self is weak and indefinite. If Stirner's individual 
("Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum" , 1844) was first in the 
field, Nietsche's "blond beast" now reigns supreme as the 
egoist, who takes up the case of the noble Aryan in contrast 
with the slavish Semite, and carries on his paganism at the 
expense of Christianity. The Nietzschian "bete blanc" is 
opposed to both forms of minor morality as he sets aside 
both conscience and sympathy in the endeavor to be his 
own heroic self. Wagner has used his poetical and musical 
genius to isolate the personality of Siegfried, the fearless, 
who never suffers from any self-suggestion of weakness. 
Ibsen's Emperor Julian has many of the egoist's features, 
and at the same time he awaits the arrival of the "right man" 
who comes into being as the "man who wills himself." 
Such characters do not argue for self-love or against the love 
of others; they simply contend for humanity in the dignity 
of individualism. The true problem of self as well as the 
chief anxiety to be felt concerning it, involves the petty 
egoism which is more opposed to major egoism than it is to 
altruism. The ego of dignity is not found in a "barrel 
of self", or in an "ivory tower"; he is not contented with 
mere "Eigenthum" nor does he strive to be a superman. 



370 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

His selfhood cannot come to him through mere pleasure, still 
less likely is it to be found along the path of vice. Julien 
Sorel, in Stendhal's "Red and Black," and Raskolnikoff, in 
Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment" reduce to absurdity 
the egoism of Napoleon when, by means of vice and crime, 
they endeavor to assert the self. These are false attempts 
to secure ego gnosis just as they are weak forms of major 
self-assertion. 

Genuine egoism exalts individuality above conventionality 
and looks to the person to dignify the inner nature of hu- 
manity. Regard for immediate welfare in the natural order 
vitiates the argument for both egoism and altruism, and 
makes it necessary to seek human selfhood upon some higher 
plane. At this point, we may resume the question concern- 
ing the demand that life makes upon us. Can man be him- 
self upon the basis of sense? Every individual who is con- 
scious of his position in the world and is anxious to realize 
his selfhood discovers that neither positive sense nor negative 
reason contains the possibility of a personal inner life which 
must be, not simply discovered in fact, but elaborated in 
deed. Man must posit himself as a person whose being is 
independent of nature, as an individual whose character is 
distinct from society. All attempts to reduce the individual 
to external systems of law and convention succeed at the 
expense of both personality and humanity. Yet the in- 
dividual succeeds in his quest of personality only when he 
abandons the desire to reach out in opposition to his natural 
and social environment, and strives to transcend the limits 
of these in some genial work of human conquest. 

The conditions of the highest possible selfhood seem to 
be removed from the will and allied with the intellect, so 
that the possibility of human dignity is at the same time 
the ground of human personality. The "man who wills 
himself" is not the genuine self; the man who knows him- 
self is a much better example of selfhood. The voluntarism 
of Fichte and Schopenhauer fails to furnish us with the 
materials of self-existence and where Fichte's self-asserting 
"Ich JJ falls short of human standards, Schopenhauer's will- 
to-live destroys the individual altogether. Indeed, our egoism 
is scarcely distinguishable from Hobbes' Leviathan, who is 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 371 

selfish and tyrannical; and resembles the primitive Cyclops, 
who was a life and a law unto himself. Such a personality 
is conceived of in the spirit of giantism as an excess of natural 
force which elsewhere had gone to make up rocks and trees, 
the genuine selfhood consists, not of force, but of freedom; 
his character is not conative, but cognitive ; he comes into be- 
ing as the man who knows. Only by intelligence can man be 
distinguished from either the world of things or the world 
of persons, for while nature and society have more power 
than the individual they have less free intelligence. Cogito, 
ergo sum — such are the means and end of human self-asser- 
tion. The will can only raise some shaggy, mountain-like 
personality whose genius is due to a freak of nature; in- 
tellect erects a Gothic-like edifice whose upward-striving is 
guided by intelligence. 

The ego of dignity is therefore the man of culture, 
rather than the man of nature; through him humanity is 
realized. For what are the claims of the social order? 
Chiefly those of necessity and actuality; society exists be- 
cause it must exist. And what are the claims of self ? They 
are those of the ideal, and through the order of individuality 
humanity comes to itself in selfhood. Only the individual 
can unify the world of persons, of him alone it can be said — 
That art thou! The man who knows has a right to be; 
his personality stands out in fair proportions, removed from 
the jealous regard of society. But the man who wills him- 
self is only one of the mass suddenly elevated to lofty sta- 
tion, as though genius could express itself through the will. 
Such an ego is the man of humanity, the homo sapiens whose 
right to exist as person is founded upon intellectual justice; 
only in an inner mentality can he be himself, hence con- 
templative egoism is the only acceptable form of individual- 
ized humanity. At the same time, this doctrine is put forth 
for the sake of universal humanity rather than for particular 
personality; for selfhood is not so much a private privilege 
as it is a general responsibility. Has not the whole human 
order been furthered by the selfhood of Plato and Caesar 
and Raphael ? Could we ask that these world-persons should 
be altruistic and devote their genius to social service ? Their 
greatness was an egoistic greatness, their calling an indivi- 



372 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

dual one, yet in all their individuality they exhibited human- 
ity as their characteristic. These intellectuals may not be 
the most serviceable of human individuals, but they are the 
most significant, since they show how the one humanity 
triumphs over inner egos and outer alters in the dignity of 
man as such. Such a striving for selfhood may not adapt 
itself to the needs of an altruistic theory, but it does not fail 
to satisfy the conditions of the one humanity, inasmuch as 
one's genuine selfhood consists in the achieving of his human- 
ity. We need not resort to the realism of William of 
Champeaux to appreciate the fact that in a Socrates, human- 
itas may exist totaliter, while it appears individualiter. A 
complete person who knows the self has passed beyond the 
atomic individualism of both ego and alter. 

The striving after selfhood is to be understood, there- 
fore, as a genuine impulse on the part of inner humanity 
whose ideals are realized according to individuality rather 
than solidarity. But this does not involve selfishness, since 
geniune individuality tends to distinguish man from nature 
rather than to separate him from society. Nor does in- 
dividuality confine man to a narrow field, for the striving 
after the universal in the self is sufficient to occupy the mental 
and moral powers of the most active moralist. To realize 
one's own inherent humanity is to attain to moral dignity, 
and with the achievement of selfhood as counseled by Vedan- 
ta and the Fichtean philosophy is the end of human existence. 
With a richly furnished and ever increasing inner life, one 
need not follow the score set by society, but may improvise 
as prompted by his own personality. The history of ethics 
is well nigh wanting in an apology for egoism, or even in 
a clear statement of the meaning of selfhood, and the termi- 
nology of the doctrine is a confusion of expressions like 
"egoist" and "solipsist", "self-love" and "selfishness", "super- 
man" and "individual." 

The true dignity of selfhood is not neutralized by the 
fact that society is a necessary factor in the development of 
individuality. Goethe's "Tasso" represents the conflict 
between the claims of the speculative self and the practical 
social order. The objective tendency was upon the sub- 
jective one, so that when the introspective Tasso meets 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 373 

Antonio, the man of affairs, he confesses that he has been 
awakened from his poetic dreams and now feels himself to 
be a double personality indeed. (Tasso, 760-766). From 
his rival, Tasso learns that one does not find himself within 
himself, but out in life among men. 

"Inwendig lernt kein Mensch sein Innerstes 
Erkennen; denn er misst nach eignem Mass 
Sich bald zu klein und leider oft zu gross. 
Der Mensch erkennt sich nur im Menschen, nur 
Das Leben lehret Jedem was er sei." 

(Tasso, 1239-1243). 

The veritable solution of the life-problem consists in ad- 
justing the possibilities of interior life to the facts of exterior 
existence. Failing to do this, the individual remains caged 
within his egoism knowing reality only as a world of inner 
life. But the exodus to the outer order is even more peril- 
ous for one's personality, which may be so diffused by the 
extent of the world or so moulded by its fixed forms that 
the glory of selfhood soon departs. Hence, when we survey 
life as it is found in experience, we are constrained to em- 
phasize the individual rather than society whose claims of 
solidarity, conformity, obligation and the like have been 
sufficiently stated in modern times. It is the poetical ego, 
not the practical non-ego, that needs our moral furtherance 
in an industrial order which strives to reduce the self to a 
servant. 

As a spectacle the ego in his striving after selfhood is 
only a beautiful one in poetry and our recent literature has 
not suffered from the story of these supermen — Faust, Brand, 
Peer Gynt, Siegfried, Hauptmann's Heinrich the Bell- 
Founder. The Vedic picture of the falcon-soul which, 
after having roamed about the air, finally folds its wings 
in the nest of Self, and the modern spectacle of a cultured 
ego climbing the ivory tower of his selfhood, are not want- 
ing in a certain sense of thrill. The self is not to be re- 
pudiated but revised and, detached from both nature and 
naturistic solidarity, it is to be asserted in terms of culture 
and humanity. There is a self and the Self, and our human 
dignity will not suffer when man seeks to expand the minor 



374 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

ego into the proportions of the major personality. Human- 
ity is not to be realized quantitatively by the mass, but puali- 
tatively by the individual. The will then assumes a higher 
form than the will-to-live, which is the spinal chord of 
society; it becomes a will to individuality, or striving for 
selfhood. 

4 THE SENSE OF HUMAN WORLDHOOD 

It is only the ego of sense who stands out in contrast to 
the world of humanity ; the contemplative self finds his being 
in his inherent humanity and is content to express his in- 
dividuality in mirror-like representation of the whole order 
of human beings. The self is to be prized and cultivated, 
not because it can be satisfied in sense, but because it can 
represent the world in which, man finds himself. Now the 
other man is only an alter-ego and if the egoism of nature 
cannot stand upon the basis of immediacy, the inverted egoism 
called altruism can be no more successful in the cultivation 
of sense. He who has found his self in the world of human- 
ity is not expected to surrender that possession for the 
benefit of others whose life is still upon the plane of animal- 
ity. For this reason, we do not seek to pass over from egoism 
to altruism, but aspire to transcend the distinction between 
them by postulating one humanity appearing in both forms 
of inner and outer personal life. This can be done by the 
work of contemplation wherein both ego and alter assume 
the office of manifesting the character of humanity. Souls 
exist, not simply for service in the world of sensation or 
volition; they may also assume the form of a spectacle so 
that in contemplating them we learn to believe in the destiny 
of mankind. But there is no dignity in the mass, except as 
it is reflected by the individual which it contains. Dignity 
is found only in the Self or the Soul, in Apollo or in the 
modern Individual. 

Just as selfhood was shown to be both capable and 
worthy of an intellectualistic view, so the social element in 
man makes possible a cultural view of life. The uses to 
which human society has been put by speculators anxious 
to prove a point have something curious about them, in that 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 375 

they suggest that the world of persons is no mere natural 
order, like that of flora and fauna, but a realm of something 
metapolitical. Plato's politics, based upon a tripartite 
scheme in both nature #nd man, uses society for speculative 
purposes, and constructs the state as a work of art; at the 
same time, it suggests that the diversity of forms in nature 
reflects its image in the several classes of men. Leibnitz's 
"Monadology", with its principle of continuity, arranges 
its spiritual atoms in a long series of beings, whose many 
grades of consciousness mirror the world in all its aspects. 
The social and spiritual conclusion is now easily drawn : 
the human order with its manifold of souls represents the 
world in a manner more complete than could be done by the 
ego in his isolation. Thus, though each individual, by 
virtue of his participation in the unity of social life, is able to 
intuit the world by means of the human reason as such, the 
organization of culture is due to a social, and not merely an 
individual effort on the part of mankind, and the "human 
understanding" is the understanding of humanity. 

The vastness of nature, from which man is constantly 
seeking to emancipate himself and organize his humanity, 
demands cooperation on the part of the sons of men. Human 
individuals are not merely the workers and warriors who 
produce practical results in the world of civilization; they 
serve also as philosophers and priests who furnish specula- 
tive evidence of a world of culture. Phidias finds in human 
bodies the typical human form; Socrates elucidates from the 
social mind an open opinion whose ground is reason. In the 
same artistic fashion, humanity serves as the model for the 
poet, whose epic cannot be completed according to the 
principium individuationis, but needs masses of men; on the 
canvas of a Rembrandt it reveals the intimate side of the 
world of persons. Humanity is thus somewhat more than 
a mass of men struggling for existence or promoting the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number; it is a spectacle 
which never fails to catch the attention of the idealist, 
whether Plato in politics or Shakespeare in poetry. Indeed, 
we can forgive the absurdities which the "Republic" in- 
troduces, when we observe how these human animals lend 
themselves to a great ideal; just as we can overlook the 



376 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

careless histrionism of the poet who is bent not so much 
upon the utility of man as his dramatic possibilities. 

In his human capacity, man has somewhat more to do 
than labor; he must reveal the entirety of the world. This 
consideration becomes more apparent when humanity is sur- 
veyed upon the side of its historical development. As we 
have seen, man's ascent from nature is not an abrupt de- 
parture, which leaves no trace of the natural behind it; 
rather is it a gradual movement masked by definite historical 
stages, the first of which appears in naturism. This program 
could not be carried out did we not assume a social basis 
for mankind, upon which progress is made according to the 
principles of historical development. Man alone has his- 
tory. The achievement of history is due to man's constant 
participation in his humanity. Upon the basis of individual- 
ism this progress could not be understood, could not 
be carried on at all; because the several stages 
through which man is to pass must be worked 
out in generations and among nations. Progress is only 
through society, which furnishes the causa efficiens of human 
movement. Civilization perfects itself by passing through 
characteristic stages ; culture comes to consciousness by de- 
grees. These approximations toward humanity, which 
make up the one history of mankind, are conceivable only 
upon a non-individualistic basis. They constitute an altruism 
in no wise comparable to the materialistic grouping of men 
in the mass of alters for purposes of social work. 

When we ignore the world of humanity, we find it 
hopeless to adjust the individual to society, where the ego 
is asked to be altruistic toward the alter while the alter thus 
becomes egoistic toward the ego. The alter-ego has some 
more essential part to play than that accorded him under 
the auspices of altruism. He confronts the ego as a non- 
ego and supplies him with evidence of the externally human 
order, as also with an estimate of its worth. For this 
reason, ethics gains by regarding humanity in a dramatic 
fashion wherein the individual's problem of life is like that 
of the protagonist. The psychology of the drama reveals 
the lyrical subject seeking entrance into the epic situation, 
or the individual with his temperamental limitations en- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 377 

deavoring to adjust himself to the world of persons. Comedy 
and tragedy follow upon his efforts to attain human stand- 
ing as he acts and suffers. Much the same is the individual's 
relation to the world of, alter — egos who are like him except 
that they are objective to his personal being. In the midst 
of it all, the individual in his humanity towers above the 
mass, and while the epic and social side of humanity is as 
important as the lyrical and egoistic, the dramatic person who 
reconciles both solidarity and the solitaire is the true sub- 
ject of moral dignity. Meanwhile, we cannot be drawn 
from our selfhood by any pretended altruism, or a view 
which in the timidity of its expression substitutes for the 
"I" a "We." The "We", however, has neither ontological 
force or ethical dignity, for it ever involves a shifting of the 
metaphysical and moral responsibility. 

5 — SOLIDARITY AND PESSIMISM 

The despair of altruism is the factor of self-sacrifice 
which enters in to cause a loss of value on the part of the 
ego. Minor morality accepts this fact as a necessary evil, 
and tries to console itself with the thought that the ego in 
his native selfishness is better off for the sacrifice that he 
makes. Or it attempts a reconcilation of the two tendencies 
and tries to find such a course of conduct as satisfies the con- 
ditions of both phases of man's life. Yet where we depart 
from the empirical order of minor morality, and find the 
value and dignity of life to consist in something contempla- 
tive, altruism enters into the life of the ego without involv- 
ing any loss of interest. Whatever be the particular method 
of life between ego and alter, it must appear that humanity 
lies deeper than this or that person and the dignity of human- 
ity is of more value than the interest of the individual. 
Hence any theory of altruism must postulate an order of 
spiritual life containing the ego and alter and it is for the 
sake of the whole that the act of unselfishness is performed. 
The individual must seek his benefit by means of his parti- 
cipation in the world order. 

Humanism is advanced by individualism as well as by 
socialism; at the same time, the ego loses nothing by his 



378 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

contact with the order of humanity. Where this watch- 
word is sounded is in connection with some utilitarian 
scheme, which aims to advance a quantitative, objective and 
massive humanity. There is, however, another humanity 
which exalts the spiritual unity of mankind and thus as- 
pires in a qualitative and subjective fashion to cultivate the 
individual. Humanity is calculated to make for the ad- 
vancement of the individual who is not called upon to sacri- 
fice himself for the sake of others whose existence has no 
more raison d'etre than his own. Just as the cause of hu- 
manity is furthered by the progress of the individual, so the 
latter gains in personalism by virtue of the idea of the species. 
Humanity is attained in a full individualism which is so 
free from narrowness as to forbid no parallel development 
on the part of the alter. The history of culture furnishes 
many an example of a happy grouping of individuals for the 
attainment of a seemingly personal end. Witness the 
Renaissance in Florence with its plurality of genius as also 
the coterie gathered at the skirts of Fontainebleau forest in 
our nineteenth century Renaissance. No better argument 
than the aesthetical one is needed to show how the realiza- 
tion of individual humanity is not preventive of a social 
program to the same end. Genuine culture involves no 
competition, because it aims at a spiritual order which is 
one and all for mankind, just as religious faith in mankind 
aspires to commune with the Supreme God. Our petty 
egoistic-altruistic conflict is all due to a misinterpretation 
of life as though it consisted in an objective and limited 
happiness whose conditions were so confined as to arouse 
selffishness and prescribe self-sacrifice. The dignity of hu- 
manity demands something more profound than minor egoism 
and altruism; it upholds the principle of one eternal human- 
ity in which all individuals participate. 

The argument in favor of altruism is not of a final 
and categorical nature, but is temporary and pessimistic. 
For the time being, under the present and painful conditions 
of the social order, sympathy must be forthcoming from the 
ego. Long ago we passed beyond the staid British doctrine 
of "Benevolence" and may now be said to survey society in 
a pessimistic manner according to the ideals of Russian com- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 379 

passion. The older "altruistis" have been superseded by 
the "sympathists" and Russian literature makes its appeal 
to tenderness in Dostoieffsky, Turgenieff, Tolstoi, and 
Gorky. Social Christianity and the Buddhism of Schopen- 
hauer and Wagner keep us aware of the possibilities and 
actualities of human suffering. Yet these tendencies are not 
anti-individualistic in their character, for as a matter of fact 
they contend against the destruction of the individual. Our 
modern Marxian socialism, far from being an altruistic 
movement, is only organized egoism, and around both the 
solitarity and solidarity of mankind we may draw the circle 
of major selfhood. Supreme individualists may be supreme 
sympathists, as is the case with Buddha and Christ, and the 
most selfish man may be one who is wanting in personality. 
From our standpoint, according to which humanity strives 
toward the spiritual and struggles against the natural, the 
individual is the last word in the universe, so that man's 
true moral dignity cannot be maintained unless his indivi- 
duality be granted him. 



VI 

THE TRIUMPH OF HUMANITY IN MAJOR 
MORALITY 

Finally, it remains to be asked whether humanity is 
destined to detach itself from nature and assert itself as a 
spiritual form of existence. Will man remain a creature 
or become a character? Is his life to obey sense, or will it 
respond to reason? Our moderns have been so anxious 
to include humanity in some system of their own that they 
have not stopped to inquire which way man himself was 
destined to go. If his life be a life of reason, sense cannot 
detain him no matter how consistent the hedonic argument 
may seem; and if he is fated to linger in nature the call of 
conscience and duty can be only an irritation. In dealing 
with man in his inner totality, the two schools have con- 
cluded, the one by counseling moderation and immediacy, 
the other renunciation and remoteness of interest, while 
Schopenhauer has applied these two ideals aesthetically and 
ethically to bring about the triumph of reason over will. 
This takes place in man when he learns to deny within him 
the world as will-to-live. The only question is, does such 
a method or such a combination of methods bring about a 
genuine victory? Does man win the battle or simply quit 
the field? It would seem as though moderation merely 
proposed a truce while renunciation involved retreat from 
the scene of conflict. 

Our conception of humanity has represented man in an 
ambiguous position and has further conceived of him as a 
striving creature who is not at home in nature nor content 
with his animality. For this all-inclusive reason we must 
conclude by postulating the triumph of spirit over sense as 
the tendency without which our human activities cannot be 
comprehended. If man were not in a spiritual atmosphere 
at all, but were wholly enclosed within the domain of im- 

380 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 381 

mediacy, it were not so easy to conclude in favor of victor- 
ious humanity; but the half-natural, half-spiritual condition 
of man, coupled with the activity of intellection that makes 
him react upon the* world of experience, renders the idea of 
spiritual supremacy plausible. Only in a humanistic system 
seeking the value and dignity of life is such a positon tenable ; 
the eudaemonistic view of man confines him to nature while 
the rigoristic ideal artificially withdraws him from the 
world of sense, so that in neither case does man have an 
opportunity to contrast the two orders of life and evaluate 
their respective interests. Humanism admits the presence 
of nature and eudaemonism in man while it does not deny 
the possibility of spiritual life also, hence it alone is capable 
of carrying on the conflict between a lower and a higher 
order of life in man's soul. Having observed how extra- 
sensitive is man so that pleasure and desire, immediacy and 
activity, do not content him, and having noted the extra- 
spontaneity that arises in the constraints of conscience as 
well as the urgings of duty, we are ready to assert that man 
is destined to triumph over both nature and himself. In 
doing this, man must perceive value in the world and pro- 
mote dignity in his life. 

I HUMAN TRIUMPH IN CONSCIOUSNESS — THE VALUE OF 

LIFE 

Only in man do we find an arrangement of values, and 
if, as Nietzsche said, "Man is the valuing animal as such", 
we may learn that his contact with nature, where the vast 
content of reality is revealed to him, impresses him with the 
value of it all as well as the sense of his striving. We can- 
not assume an extra-human standpoint and lay down a 
major premise to the effect that whatever fulfills certain 
unknown ideal conditions has value, for we are more or less 
closely attached to the world itself and our reality is given 
to us through the receptive will rather than by some de- 
monstration of the intellect. But from what man has been 
and has done in his history, we feel safe in assuming that 
he has been realizing the worth of existence whose phases 
of value are as apparent as its forms of being. If man finds 



382 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

no value in his world-life, how can we explain the elabora- 
tion of inner culture and outer civilization? If he was 
destined to remain a prey of passion rather than a subject 
of sentiment, how can we explain the origin and develop- 
ment of his science and art, his ethics and religion? The 
progress of these free forms of spiritual life attest to the 
fact that existence has not been in vain. Man has been 
unable to live without ideals, just as he has found it impossi- 
ble to exist without ideal excitement. His activities have 
aimed at a remote, an ultimate interest, and while he has 
often deluded himself into accepting fictitious values, the 
general sense of worth has ever prevailed. 

The standard assumed cannot be the hedonic one alone, 
for both eudaemonism and the theory of value have some- 
thing to say concerning the fate of man on earth. Man's 
destiny is determined, not simply by what he does, but by 
what he suffers; hence we inquire concerning the outcome of 
life by asking whether man can endure under the conditions 
life imposes upon him. In this way happiness becomes, not 
merely a general satisfaction, but a test of reality and value, 
and when man becomes happy, he demonstrates the con- 
quering humanity within him. Serious souls whose suffering 
makes them wise do not complain merely of the personal 
pain that life inflicts, but are wounded by the thought that 
man was never destined to be happy, so that humanity is 
a failure. Such pessimism, while having its root in the in- 
dividual, assumes a cosmic form when humanistic ethics 
begins to chide nature for her blindness and imperfection. To 
him who believes in humanity, however, escape is not im- 
possible, for pessimism is a philosophic argument standing 
in need of defense against a victorious humanity. 

Humanity is neither wholly speculative nor purely 
practical; its nature appears first in will then in intellect. 
As a result, there is more than one way of approach to the 
garden of human life. When, therefore, we observe how 
optimism has some claim upon man's attention, we may 
adjust the two views by allowing the mind to accept the 
critical suggestions of pessimism, whose interest in the ideal 
has urged it to castigate experience, while the will in its 
practical and unreflective fashion can best realize its possi- 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 383 

bilities under the auspices of optimism. In other words, 
life may look melancholy, but we human beings can act in 
optimistic opposition to the given circumstances. Specula- 
tive pessimism, as it* weighs ideal and real only to conclude 
against the world of nature, can combine with the practical 
optimism of action. This division of life's labor further 
suggests that one may be pessimistic toward the finished past 
and optimistic toward the plastic future as it confronts the 
will. Some such adjustment becomes necessary when we 
consider how both views of life have an air of tenability, 
while the optimist makes pessimistic admissions as to fact 
where the pessimist constantly assumes optimistic ideals. 
Such a paradoxical condition of things is wholly explicable 
in the light of our humanity, made up as this is of a mixture 
of nature and spirit. 

2 — THE TRIUMPH OVER IMMEDIACY 

The commingling of optimism and pessimism in man's 
conquest of humanity appears in the forms of hedonism. In 
the world of sense man has carried on his conflict with pleas- 
ure and achieved his own victory, whence we learn how the 
consciousness of humanity triumphs over its immediate sti- 
muli. The discovery of that paradox whereby pleasure 
does not wholly please man, and the perception of the fruit- 
lessness which ever accompanies the grasping after fluid 
feelings, lead man to seek his human satisfaction elsewhere. 
Shall the paradox of pleasure be regarded as defeat or vic- 
tory for humanity? As argument for pessimism or opti- 
mism? Whichever way the emphasis may be moved, it 
remains as a fact that man's triumph over nature appears 
in his very dissatisfaction over what nature affords ; hedonism 
shows conclusively that it was not meant to explain striving 
humanity whose efforts are directed toward some other than 
a sensuous goal. The lower discontent is the higher satis- 
faction, the failure of sense the success of spirit; hence the 
paradox of pleasure is the paradox of humanity. If man 
was not destined to remain in nature, if he is not supposed 
to be content with his animality, hedonic dissatisfaction can 
only argue in favor of some higher and more truly human 



384 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

view. Since history is progressive and not regressive, it is 
impossible to return to nature as Rousseau advised, and 
human consciousness having been pagan in the past cannot 
now return to the condition of naivete recommended by 
Schiller. The man of the future must be of the future 
and not of the past. 

The hedonic rejection of pleasure, involuntary as it 
was, led to the recognition of desire as the more original 
source of human activity. By means of desire man is led 
away from actual experience as given in the present to the 
ideal as outlined in the future. Where mere feeling affords 
a negative means of showing how man fails to find realiza- 
tion in the naturistic world of sense, desire testifies in a 
positive fashion by leading man from the externally given 
to the inwardly conceived, and where pleasure is a posteriori, 
desire is a priori. It was for such a reason that we sought 
the essence of value in active desire rather than in passive 
pleasure, for in a form of consciousness arising within and 
leading its subject beyond the borders of experience is found 
the essence of humanity. Man is the creature of desire and 
the triumph of humanity over nature appears again in the 
creative form which consciousness assumes when man enter- 
tains ideal forms of mind in connection with desire. Man 
is confronted by another than the question, "What ought 
I to do?" He asks also, "What may I desire?" If, there- 
fore, within the world of time and space his desires urge him 
beyond and above these limitations, we assume that, in so 
far, he has demonstrated the victorious quality of his human- 
ity. The endlessness of desire reveals humanity transcend- 
ing nature. 

In the ideas of utility and eudaemonia appear the coun- 
terparts of pleasure and desire, and where the original prin- 
ciples of hedonism were positive, the later ones are negative 
and reunuciatory. Since man's desire to attain to something 
beyond nature seems fruitless, he will console himself with 
the culture of immediacy which in Bacon's system consisted 
in ruling the powers of nature by the might of knowledge. 
With this early modern thinker who was at heart an em- 
piricist, such a form of culture was deemed sufficient. With 
Voltaire and Goethe, who had higher ideals of knowledge, 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 385 

the cultivation of the garden was a resort to be adopted 
when the impossibility of pure cognition had been demon- 
strated. For this reason, eudaemonism becomes a philoso- 
phy of renunciation; 1 as if to say, ''We would know, but 
since we cannot, we will work; we have sought happiness 
in the understanding but finding it not, we seek peace 
through the will." In the conflict between nature and spirit, 
eudaemonism must be regarded as a sort of truce; it does 
not lead man to pleasure, but relieves him of pain: it con- 
ceives of an ideal life, but it is not an ideal for man. The 
ideals of immediacy and activity are not sufficient to establish 
the worth of life. 

To posit immediacy as the true realm of human activity 
is to indulge in bad metaphysics, for, even in his purely 
sensuous capacity, man has not wholly failed to see some- 
what of the world's real significance. This view may not 
indeed be sun-clear, but man was meant to survey the world 
rather opaquely through the atmosphere of immediacy, and 
it is by means of this ability to penetrate the phenomenal 
that he has secured his principles of beauty and truth. 
Science, which has surrendered to immediacy, does not fail 
to apprehend nature in its totality, while art postulates a 
world-order wherein the confused mass of sense lends itself 
to a harmonious plan. Eudaemonism has been viewing the 
world as a system supposed to produce pleasure, but the 
defeat of such a hedonology does not force philosophy to quit 
the field of human values. Life is more for instruction than 
entertainment, and the genuine triumph of humanity con- 
sists in the victory of reason over the sense-world of im- 
mediacy. 

Human values are the values of culture, and these make 
necessary some recognition of the inwardness of spirit as well 
as the remoteness of the object which it contemplates. The 
ideal of immediacy, whether in the ancient Garden of Epi- 
curus or the modern jardin of Voltaire, thwarts humanity 
in its attempt at realization and leads man to inquire, as 
poor Stendhal used to put it, "Is this all?" Our human 
world was not given to us by nature in the form of im- 
mediacy, but has been willed by humanity in its "energy of 
contemplation." Consciousness is not a mere accompaniment 



386 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

of our human life, but the essence of it; for it makes man 
what he is, by giving him, as it were, mind-stuff out of 
which his activities create a world of cognition. Man can- 
not receive immediacy as such, for he can hold fast to things 
only as he proves, or intuits, them. Still less can man be 
made happy by any gifts that nature may bestow, and with 
such satisfaction, or rather stupefaction, as may come from 
activity in the immediate order of things, we fail to find the 
things that are needful: personality, freedom both physical 
and political, the will-to-acquiesce. These are creations of 
the human spirit, not mere crystallizations from without. 

Activism is an anodyne. Here we have the other weak- 
ness of eudaemonism, which with its immediateness and ener- 
gism, fails to settle with the will as will, confining its atten- 
tion to the spinal chord. As a result, eudaemonism is first 
purely agerent and then merely egerent, and in neither case 
does it find its centre in volition. We cannot wholly re- 
ceive ; we cannot simply act ; we must create. Here activism 
is found wanting, for it provides for only an endless series 
of efforts directed toward no real goal, and does not dis- 
cover the free creativeness in the human will. Work is not 
a sincere form of striving, but an occupation by means of 
which empty time is filled and ennui postponed. Activity 
has its place in a system of human striving, and this place 
is a real one. Eudaemonism, however, merely uses activity 
as an anaesthetic, where a straightforward view of human 
work would lead to some objective goal. The result is such 
as to make men appear as amateur humans, rather than as 
real persons, and their life is more practice than perform- 
ance. The values with which life is potential are to be 
secured by something more creative than Aristotelian and 
Voltairian activism, and the deed must be a factum noume- 
non of spiritual selfhood. 

3 HUMAN TRIUMPH IN CONDUCT THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

Our human ability to receive the significance of nature, 
in fitting forms of consciousness is but half of the problem, 
whose counterpart consists in reacting upon nature, with 
appropriate methods of conduct. Man must contemplate 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 387 

the world with worthy feelings, he must carry on the con- 
quest of life with dignified motives. At this point our truly 
human conception of man seems to aid us in avoiding the 
paradoxes involved in* the two minor forms of ethics, accord- 
ing to which man is supposed to live either without ideals or 
to strive without hope of their realization. The humanistic 
system of life does not allow nature so to submerge man that 
he cannot rise above the conditions of animality, nor does it 
admit that our human ideals are so derived from an alien 
realm of reason that their attainment is forever beyond flesh 
and blood. Our sensations and our ideas, our immediate feel- 
ings and our ultimate values, are all our own and it is just 
to suppose that the intellect which aligns the ideal is not 
blind to the possibilities of the will that is to achieve it; for 
so unified are the functions of the mind that ideas take 
cognizance of volitions and in both active and passive forms 
does the soul express one and the same nature. 

Just as our belief in the value of life was clouded by a 
eudaemonistic form of pessimism, so our claims for human 
dignity are confronted by a moralistic phase of despair. 
Where man is supposed to attain to a rational good he seems, 
according to Kant, to be a prey to the "radically bad" and 
a critical system, which calls upon the understanding to give 
laws to nature as the will makes maxims for humanity, ends 
in religious pathos. Nevertheless, Kant's explanation of the 
bad provides a way of escape, although he did not avail 
himself of it. Badness is not found in reason alone, for 
such a condition of perversity would make man's character 
demoniacal; nor is it confined to mere sense whose debasing 
influence would be bestial. Man, however, is human in 
his sins and his badness appears in the tendency to put sense 
above reason instead of subordinating the lower to the 
higher. Now, our own conception of humanity, that strange 
mixture of sense and spirit, makes it possible for us to give 
a similar setting to the life of man in its goodness and bad- 
ness, for we have observed how ambiguous is the position 
occupied by man in the universe. At the same time, the 
dynamic principle of striving leads us to postulate a condi- 
tion of things in which sense shall be overcome by spirit, 
the triumph of humanity in conduct. Man's moral supre- 



388 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

macy thus seems to consist, not in the elimination of sense 
according to the maxim of renunciation, but in a subordina- 
tion of the low to a low place and an exaltation of the high 
to a lofty position. The "good man" is still human and 
his condition is one of life rather than death. Both eudae- 
monism and rigorism give sense undue prominence, the one 
positively, the other negatively. Humanism refuses to con- 
sider the sensuous as in any way convincing and puts the 
purpose of life upon a plane where sense appears in a purely 
symbolic way. The view of life that surveys man as such 
reveals a condition of being where immediacy yields to ulti- 
macy, passion to sentiment, the creature to the character. 

The active realization of humanity is consistent with a 
condition of things in which some measure of sense still 
survives, and man can attain to humanity in the midst of 
his actual existence. Eudaemonism fails to do justice to 
the ideal aspect of humanity and had man taken counsel 
of its exponents the spiritual achievements of the race could 
never have been brought about. In its own way, rigorism 
is also alien to the needs of humanity, for its adherents seem 
more interested in negating sense than in affirming spirit; 
it is a sad fact that the traditional way of approaching spirit- 
ual life is through denial alone. The triumph of humanity 
does not consist in either moderation or renunciation; it is 
found in a positive affirmation of the spiritual as the superior 
part of man. What is expected of man is not merely temper- 
ance in handling things of sense, or asceticism in rejecting 
them, but dignity, whose nature consists in developing the 
inner totality of a form of life not destined to remain in 
the mere objective individualism of nature. 

If we recall how characteristic ethics sought to view its 
ideals, first as sharply outlined against the air, and then suf- 
fused with the atmosphere of humanity, we may observe in 
what way humanity triumphs over its duties as well as its de- 
sires. Man conducts himeslf with dignity even though he does 
not shrink from the cranes of conscience or the ravens of re- 
nunciation. Nevertheless, conscience, as a human function 
guarding the interests of human beings, constitutes a force- 
ful argument in favor of man's moral supremacy over nature. 
To the lower order of sensation he is bound by the ties of 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 389 

pleasure and pain, but is none the less amenable to the 
higher order of humanity with its interests of approval and 
disapproval. Just as the deeper meaning of conscience is 
found in humanity, so *its value seems to consist in evincing 
the inherent dignity of man whose rights are guarded by 
the stern master of compunction. Approval and disap- 
proval are superior to simple pleasure and pain, just as hu- 
manity is superior to nature and in this elevation of man 
through his morality, the dignity of human life appears in 
clear outline. 

The treatment of human rectitude has no other signifi- 
cance, and while its autonomous form is as hopeless as the 
infallibility of conscience, its human significance is no less con- 
vincing. Rectitude is an ideal having at heart the interest 
of humanity, that is, humanity comme il faut. Instead of 
regarding humanity as a mere concept including all indivi- 
duals, we should further consider it as an ideal of perfect 
spiritual life on earth; it is not only logical in its form but 
ethical in its content. This notion of humanity is advanced 
consistently by our conception of rectitude as a disinterested 
regard for virtue. When man is raised to the point of 
view where he can look upon humanity as possessing value, 
he has begun to appreciate the dignity of human life, and 
while the judgment of right may be concerned with many 
a detail of moral conduct, it cannot conceal the totality of 
the ethical, nor the dignity involved within it. 

The active side of characteristic ethics is no less indica- 
tive of human triumph over immediacy as the instances of 
freedom and duty clearly show. In these cases, as with con- 
science and rectitude, it becomes necessary to humanize our 
ideals in order to evince the proper dignity of man; for a 
rationalistic scheme, making man inferior to moral obligation, 
tends only to degrade his being and discourage his efforts 
toward affirming selfhood. Freedom has been seen to con- 
sist in something natural rather than in some extraordinary 
form of activity and now the genuine motive behind human 
liberty appears more clearly. The earlier treatment of 
freedom with the Schoolman was suffused with a theological 
argument urged in favor of human destiny, for it seemed 
impossible to provide for a rational scheme of redemption for 



390 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

man unless lie were conceived of as free. The modern En- 
lightenment culminating in Kant sought to put freedom 
upon a moral basis and contended that man must be free if 
he is to perform his duty. But the constructive view of 
freedom, whereby man creates in the world of thought and 
action, now appears in the interest of human dignity and 
the triumph of man over nature is made possible by the 
inherent freedom of the human spirit. The category of 
duty has the same significance for the achievement of human 
dignity, for it consists in an abiding sense of responsibility 
arising in connection with man's consciousness of the order 
that upholds and envelops him. With his place in the spirit- 
ual world of human life brought to his realization, man can 
hardly escape from the ideal of duty; the result is dignity. 

Finally, the sharp decision that leads man to renounce 
the world and to hate his life therein asserts most forcefully 
the superiority of man over nature. Both the battle lost 
and the battle won are equally terrible, and renunciation 
defeats humanity while seeking to deliver it. Nevertheless, 
the ideals of rigorism have about them something convincing 
where the spiritual supremacy of man is involved. Again, 
raise the standard of dignity and the spectable of the ascetic 
becomes thrilling. We see what man can accomplish, and we 
learn to believe in humanity in general by noting what it 
does in particular. Men who crave stigmata and make the 
vow of silence were never meant to be human guides, yet 
they do not fail to instruct us in the fine art of spiritual 
life; they live apart from the world of average life, and 
while they may not align for man his duty, they indicate 
for him his. dignity. Just as the artistic genius with his 
capacity for ideal pleasure reveals unto us the mystery of 
beauty, so the religious prophet reveals human sublimity in 
the possibility of ideal pain. These military and martyr- 
like ideals are always inspiring, though not always convinc- 
ing. 

With these various forms of human character before us, 
we can hardly deny that man is destined to triumph over his 
situation in nature, as well as his narrow egoism of im- 
mediate feeling. He achieves dignity in his character as he 
also finds value through his consciousness. His art and 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 391 

science transform the perceptual display of nature into an 
order of beauty and truth, while his ethics and religion react 
upon immediate impulses in such a way that they are 
changed into forms of ideal activity, whose goal is no material 
consideration at all. While a eudaemonistic form of pessi- 
mism may forbid man to call his life in the world of time 
and space a satisfactory one, so that his belief in life's values 
may be threatened, there arises a corresponding form of 
optimism which exalts man by considering him capable of 
restraint in his desire and renunciation of life with its tangle 
of pleasure and pain. In general, the possibilities of man 
seem about equal to the satisfactions of nature, so that the 
argument for human dignity is as cogent as the contention in 
favor of the worth of life. To demonstrate the dignity of 
man it is not necessary to resort to objective history where 
human deeds are recounted to the merit or demerit of the 
human subject; we need only to inquire whether, in the 
light of what humanity has been, man can set his attention 
upon an ideal aim and pursue that which has only remote 
interest. Is man capable of idealism? Upon such a ques- 
tion seems to depend the whole issue of human dignity. 
Does this idealism involve the surrender of selfhood? 

4 — THE TRIUMPH OVER RENUNCIATION 

Here we seem to have the climax of all moral thinking 
expressed as it is by inquiring, should man realize himself in 
his humanity, or should he renounce himself as individual? 
Both naturistic and characteristic ethics converge, as they 
also conflict, one tendency urging man toward individual 
being, the other toward social not-being. Hence arise the 
questions , "What ought I to do with the world? Shall I 
receive it, or repudiate it? Shall I regard it in love or in 
hate?" Egoistic eudaemonism invites us to lay hold of life 
while it passes by us, the doctrine of renunciation warns us 
to let it slip through the fingers, to cast the pearl back into 
the deep, the gold into the mine. This is the doctrine of 
renunciation clearly recognizable in Buddhism and Christian- 
ity, discernible anew in Schopenhauer's negation, Wagner's 
renunciation, Tolstoi's crucifixion, and Huysmans' "Road to 



392 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

Damascus." The atmosphere of this retroaction is that of 
pessimism and self-pity, and while it witnesses to the glory 
of our victorious humanity, it tends to deprive it of its vic- 
tory, for man must conquer both nature and fate, and re- 
nunciation consists in a bitter surrender to the universe. 

In striking contrast to this burning out of sense by those 
whose faces are ablaze with spirit, is the wild revolution 
against life carried on by our modern egoists. These assert 
the individual and refuse to be submerged in the social 
scheme of solidarity; they counsel man to be the master, not 
the slave of his ideals; they urge him to live life and love 
the world, with all their possibilities of knowledge, of pleas- 
ure, of power. In the midst of the storm, one sees the cyni- 
cal countenances of Ibsen and Strindberg, while he hears the 
imprecations of Nietzsche and the milder protests of Haupt- 
mann and Sudermann. Ever since the days of Napoleon, 
French writers, from Stendhal to Anatole France, have urged 
the individual to arraign society and the world, and the ideal 
of renunciation has been left for ancient Jews and modern 
Russians. It is metaphysically impossible and morally repug- 
nant for man to surrender himself to purely activistic ethics, 
which like a turbid stream, would carry him away from his 
egoistic moorings. There was a time when an ethical doctrine 
could be proved simply by saying, "Benevolence", or "Duty," 
but these watch-words sound faint in the ear of those who 
are themselves crying, "Be thyself," "Live thy life." It 
now comes to light that renunciation was the foundation 
upon which minor ethics reared its great moralistic struc- 
tures of hedonism and rigorism, and the affirmation of the 
ego now tends to shake these buildings to their foundations. 

Nevertheless, there is an implicit truth and residuary 
value in the ideal of renunciation, as even victorious human- 
ity must admit. Certainly we cannot receive the world in a 
heedless and uncritical spirit, without seeking some sort of 
spiritual reaction upon it; for to remain passive is to leave 
life upon the level of plant and animal. And if the world 
is not to be renounced, it must be handled in a masterful 
fashion by the man of knowledge, of art, of worship, and 
of conduct. The ego cannot consist of the simple solitaire, 
who is mentally blind to the totality of the world about him, 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 3 93 

so that neither the petty egoism of the hedonist nor the genial 
individuality of the eudaemonistic worker in the garden will 
suffice for life. Hence, when we refuse to suffer for the 
sake of duty and repudiate the altruistic destruction of the 
individual, we cannot deny that the totality of our life de- 
mands the recognition of both selfhood and worldhood in 
humanity, We know that man can choose pleasure or pain, 
being or not-being, for the natural order which produced 
him uses death as well as life to execute its sovereign ends, 
so that man is furnished, not only with an impulse to live, 
but an instinct to die. The whole history of man shows a 
darkened sky above and a black earth beneath, while art and 
religion enter in to calm and console him. As a result, the 
possibilities of renunciation can not be questioned, and all 
that is needed is a philosophy capable of guiding this subtle 
instinct of repudiation. 

What ought man to do with his world, himself, his life 
in the world? Should man renounce his claims to self- 
hood, or realize them? In opposition to blind renunciation, 
we may assert that man has the right to selfhood, if to 
nothing else; that is, he may live in self, if not for self. 
Toward the world, his attitude need not be one of renuncia- 
tion, but a "mental acquiescence," as Spinoza (Ethics, Pt. 
v. Props, xxvii, xxxvm) called it. Man as individual may 
accept the universe in its totality, and in so doing he will 
find that his dignity is increased and not diminished by an 
act of acquiescence which is mental, and whose interior 
character consists in recognizing the world rather than in 
surrendering to it in an unintelligent fashion. It is toward 
this higher level, where acquiescence in the whole and affirm- 
ation in the individual meet, that the ethics of the present 
should strive. This ideal is in accordance with the funda- 
mental notion of man, laid down in Part One, where we 
saw humanity striving with nature in order to secure a 
world-order of its own; and what was premised there of 
man in his culture is here corroborated by the ethical elabor- 
ation of value and dignity as moral categories. 



394 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

5 — THE DIGNITY OF ACQUIESCENCE 

In major ethics, there is only an apparent contradiction 
between value and dignity, for in the very act of receiving 
from the world man is also reacting upon it. When he 
yields to the ethical, he feels instinctively that he is suffering 
so much loss in the way of value, and it is only the belief 
in the victorious nature of his moral dignity that reconciles 
him to the good. In the celebration of this victory, he is 
permitted to participate under a sky where no clouds of re- 
nunciation are seen. For in the major sense of life, the 
value of humanity itself, as well as the value felt by human- 
ity as such, in no small degree consists in the dignified re- 
action upon the given order of the universe; or as one of 
Gorky's characters puts it, "A man is of value in proportion 
to his resistance to the power of life" (Foma Gordyeefr, tr. 
Hapgood, x, p. 301). From this point of view, according 
to which renunciation is absorbed in human dignity, man is 
led to realize that he loses no genuine value from his allegi- 
ance to the ethical, for major morality is not unlike art and 
religion in indicating the resultfulness of human striving. 
Such a view is not by any means a Semitic one, but consists 
as well with our Aryan pride of humanity, which forbids 
that morality should exploit mankind. Man's life being an 
alteration, a combination, of striving from within and suffer- 
ing from without, it is not expected that one function should 
wholly yield to the other. For this reason, we cannot coun- 
sel a man to cease striving, according to the ideal of self- 
assertion, and to suffer according to the ideal of self-sur- 
render, but must advise him to be himself in the major 
sense of human dignity. That he is not called upon to re- 
nounce. Man can will his own negation, for there is passion 
for non-existence which is as real, althought not as ordinary, 
as the struggle for existence. He who wills to be can also 
will not to be. Yet even under the weight of such a view 
of life man may still be himself in all the dignity of his 
humanity. Buddhism, which tends to inculcate a nihilistic 
ideal, is none the less insistent upon selfhood, for its very 
notion of redemption is that of self-salvation according to 
the ideals of the "four-fold truth" and the "eight-fold path." 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 395 

Hence when one's pessimism tends to rob him of life's very 
essence, he may still cling to selfhood in all its inner dignity. 
When he plays the Entsagungsmotiv it is his own music and 
it sounds pleasant to* his ears. 

Nowhere within the realm of minor morality do we 
discover the plan of a victorious moral campaign, for it is 
either sense or reason that triumphs, not humanity itself. 
Every one who really lives his life, however, is anxious to 
avoid both the snares of the flesh and the toils of the law, 
so that he wonders whether he cannot find some course of 
ideal conduct which shall enable him to obtain the victory 
over these foes of the inner life. This mingling of the high 
and the low, unknown to Wagner in the "Ring!' is realized 
by him in the ideal love of Tristan and Isolde. The fated 
yet happy pair learn of a love which knows how to rise 
above the self-seeking erotic affection of Siegfried and Brunn- 
hilde, while it does not call upon them to renounce their 
holy passion. In the midst of their resignation, they find 
solace in sympathy, and the eternal night into which they 
sink brings love as well as death. Earthly joy alone cannot 
satisfy the striving human spirit, while sharp renunciation 
is no less likely to stifle the hope of humanity ; thus it be- 
comes necessary to postulate an ideal acquiescence in the 
world-order of humanity, whereby man may still triumph 
if only in his universal capacity. 

But while man is ever on the brink of spiritual negation, 
his inner nature guided by a death-instinct as well as by a 
life-impulse, he is led to believe that his own individual 
existence is not an evil. To man in his full humanity, 
major morality says, "Live thy life/' "Love thy world/' and 
the whole of the inward striving of humanity finally con- 
centrates in the individual as the one who catches the mean- 
ing of humanity and carries out its plan. Both art and 
religion take on new power, for it appears that their concern 
is not with a minor moralism, which ever seeks to weaken 
the will or anaesthetize the soul, but rather with a major 
ethical life, wherein the individual's self-affirmation is 
qualified and restricted only by an infinite humanity in which 
there is room for a full play of egoistic fancy. When human 
existence is thus viewed, the triumph of humanity is in no 



396 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

wise improbable, while human dignity is attainable without 
the depreciation of genuine human values. No just concep- 
tion of the spiritual world-order can forbid human self-ex- 
pression, and the victory of humanity need not spell defeat 
for the individual. 

So far as man's triumph in conduct is concerned, much 
depends upon our conception of what he was originally ex- 
pected to do. Naturistic ethics claims that man was meant 
to enjoy his humanity in both self and society; characteristic 
intuitionism believes he was meant to perfect his humanity 
in reason. Now, experience shows that man has not made 
a success of either the animality of sense or the spirituality 
of reason ; he is still human and stands midway between two 
alien orders of life. Our estimate of his moral dignity is to 
be made accordingly. We cannot praise man if he ignore 
ultimate reason for the sake of nature; we cannot hope to 
find him perfecting the spirit in defiance of sense. His proper 
attitude consists in adjusting the claims of one to the other 
in a form of life wherein sense occupies the lower, spirit the 
higher position, and it is just this vertical and progressive 
order of things that enables us to view man as he is in his 
transition from nature to spirit. Hence we consider whether 
he has attained to moral dignity, not by asking whether he has 
eliminated the sensuous, which claim would result in hypo- 
crisy as the attempt led to defeat, but whether he has found 
it possible to subordinate the sensuous to the spiritual. 

Ethics here seems at one with metaphysics, for as man 
by mental acquiescence seems to apprehend the very reality 
of the world as a whole, so he thereby attains to the summit 
of his own moral striving. In the act of acquiescence, how- 
ever, man is not inactive so that one must transcend the 
Spinozistic ideal, if he would represent the climax of our 
human struggle for selfhood and worldhood. The essential 
element in the ego's activity now assumes a form more signi- 
ficant than that of a striving for selfhood, as in the "man 
who wills himself," for by means of this acquired, intellec- 
tual selfhood the individual asserts his worldhood and 
exercises his free activity in willing the world. To will the 
world is an act whereby the individual uses his own self- 
hood for the purpose of attaining worldhood, while as an 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 397 

act of self-realization it is at the same time an acknowledg- 
ment of the world-order in its totality. Ethics thus reveals 
its need of metaphysics, for the highest act of the soul stands 
in need of an ontoiogical principle; that is, a world which 
it can will. No ethical system but the major morality of 
selfhood can represent the unity of the practical and the 
speculative. 

Such a conclusion is in harmony with the philosophical 
principles laid down in PART ONE, where we saw how hu- 
manity had inaugurated a historical system of living ontology, 
beginning with speculative and practical forms of striving 
and ending in a world of humanity recognizable in know- 
ledge and art, religion and ethics. We did not find it neces- 
sary to demonstrate any special principle of reality, inasmuch 
as these phases of the inner life make us aware of the pres- 
ence of a world-order implicit in our thinking and acting. 
To this idea ethics returns when it seeks to postulate the 
supreme act of the individual, whose will in its freedom 
exercises no caprice incident upon mere individuality, but 
culminates its striving in a supreme act of willing the world 
as a world of humanity. This unity of selfhood and world- 
hood might be advanced also as a reconciliation of freedom 
and fate, but our system has nowhere made use of a stark 
principle of free-will, nor has it encountered a fixed element 
of law. On the contrary, our human striving for selfhood 
culminates in a striving for worldhood, so that the common 
distinction of freedom and fate does not set the self in op- 
position to the world, inasmuch as the most characteristic 
act of selfhood consists in willing its worldhood. 

In this metaphysical condition of free fate, man finds 
himself placed in a position where self-realization and self- 
surrender are no longer in opposition. Self-realization is 
seen to imply a form of selfhood which needs something more 
than positive sense or negative reason to bring about its 
achievement. The striving for selfhood assumes a cosmic 
character, wherein one's individuality involves a kind of 
universality, and like a man of genius he becomes a world- 
person, or genuine Ego. This condition of things within 
the soul makes the act of acquiescence something quite dif- 
ferent from a mere self-surrender as that which causes pain 
and entails loss. Renunciation is realization, and selfhood 



398 VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 

worldhood. It is the triumph of humanity in a major 
system of life, wherein the ideal in man and the real in the 
world meet upon a common plane, and self-realization be- 
comes an act of metaphysical significance. This is the true 
metaphysics of morals, the unity of sein and sollen. 

The question of man's moral triumph finds expression 
directly in terms of our present system. Man is in nature, 
but apparently he is of spirit, a condition of consciousness 
recognizable as humanity. Now arises the question whether 
man is destined to accomplish what he has conceived to be his 
ethical vocation; namely, the assertion of his inner being in 
contrast to outer nature. Will the history of humanity re- 
veal the victory of nature over spirit or of spirit over nature ? 
Both eudaemonism and rigorism refuse to entertain this 
problem, for where eudaemonism ignores the ultimate in 
spirit for the immediate in sense, rigorism refuses to consider 
man in his obviously sensuous nature. Humanism alone is 
capable of raising the question of human triumph over 
nature. Among those who take this point of view, there is 
difference of opinion concerning the outcome of human 
striving, but it is not comparable to the party-quarrel between 
the two traditional schools. Schopenhauer and Wagner 
assume that reason is destined to conquer will, that spirit 
will triumph over sense; Ibsen and Sudermann, on the con- 
trary, seem inclined to postulate a victory for nature over 
reason (cf. Axelrod, Hermann Sundermann, Eine Studie, 
1907). 

But this statement of the case seems to indicate a con- 
tinuance of the error that nature negates spirit, and that 
reason should annihilate sense. Our view of humanity calls 
for no such either-or; we survey man with sense below and 
spirit above him, not with one to the right and the other to 
the left, and where a strictly ethical and logical view of 
reason may find it impossible to consider such a mingling of 
concrete and abstract, a religious and aesthetical view of 
humanity can proceed in no other way. Both worship and 
art apprehend man in his totality, wherein spirit and sense, 
conscious and unconscious, intellect and will, are strangely 
mingled to form humanity. Man is not the clear-cut moral 
agent whose ethical nature was so sharply outlined by the 



VALUE AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE 399 

dogmatic thinkers of the rigoristic school, nor his world the 
transparent landscape formerly used as a background for 
the staid scenes of human life; on the contrary, living hu- 
manity is found in an atmospheric world whose warmth 
and moisture change the appearance of the free moral agent 
into a real human subject. Thus situated, man may not be 
able to satisfy desire or willing to perform his duty; but in 
the totality of his inner life, he finds value just as his striving 
leads him to achieve human dignity. 



INDEX 



Abelard, 313. 

Aeschylus, 45. 

Alexander, 115, 150, 151, 353. 

Angelo, 28, 65, 112, 115. 

Aquinas, 245. 

Aristippus, 267. 

Aristotle, 27, 71, 80, 99, 103, 

104, 146-149. 151, I5 2 , 

159, 168 181, 196, 298, 

305, 313, 347. 348, 353, 

358, 360. 
Arminius, 245. 
Aryans, The, 56, 58, 64, 67, 

139, 282, 367, 394. ■ 
Augustine, St., 156, 231, 297, 

356, 368. 
Bacon, 146, 147, 150-154, 159, 

358, 384. 
Balza, 138, 264. 
Barbizon School, 146, 378. 
Barres, Maurice, 117, 366. 
Baumgarten, 271, 306. 
Beethoven, 28, 115. 
Bentham, 94, 97, 118, 132-134, 

170. 
Bhagavad Gita, The, 64, 74, 

152, 209, 254, 344, 351. 
Bios, 192. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 112, 115, 

353, 37o, 392 • 
Brahman, 57, 63, 64, 67. 
Browning, 171. 
Buddha, Gautama, 50, 74, m, 

161, 209, 255, 256, 262, 

263,379, 391- 
Burke, 149, 306. 
Butler, 112, 113, 117, 192, 193, 

208, 242, 298, 347, 362. 
Caesar, 112, 115, 151, 295, 353, 

372. 
Calderon, 74, 254. 
Calvin, 245. 



Champeaux, William of, 372. 
Christianity, 30, 64, 74, 86, 156- 

158, 161, 185, 196, 200, 

203, 222, 233, 234, 255, 

256, 261, 265, 267, 337, 

338, 342, 347, 365, 367, 

379, 391. 
Cicero, 151, 192, 353. 
Clarke, Samuel, 84, 216, 217, 

221, 242 298. 
Confucius, 85. 
Corot, 146, 169, 305. 
Cudworth, 84, 185, 187, 190, 

242, 298. 
Cynics, The, Cynicism, 58, 185, 

263, 267. 
Cyrenaics, 58, 170. 
Dante, Danteist, 174, 175, 254. 
Darwin, 196-198. 
David, J. L., 146. 
Davids, Rhys, 255. 
Delacroix, 144, 146. 
Descartes, 67. 
Dhamma Pada, The, 210. 
Diodorus, 192. 
Dominicans, The, 156. 
Donatello, 252. 
Dbstoieffsky, 370, 379. 
Ehrenfels, 320, 324, 325. 
Eleatics, The, 215. 
Enlightenment, The, 81, 150, 

153, 174, 300, 390. 
Epicurus, Epicurean, 73, 115, 

144, 294, 298, 385. 
Eucken, 53, 349. 
Euclid, 215, 218. 
Fichte, 66, 116, 177, 184, 335, 

348, 364, 368, 370, 372. 
France, Anatole, 126, 283, 392. 
Fiancis, St., 295. 
Franciscan, 156. 
Geulincx, 260. 



401 



402 



INDEX 



Ghiberti, 252. 

Gnosticism, 46, 79, 124. 

Goethe, 148, 154, 155, 158, 
159, 169, 174, 175. 2 95, 
299, 35i, 372, 373> 384- 

Gorky, 260, 394. 

Gospels, The, 260. 

Greek Philosophy, 57, 85, 215. 

Green, T. H., 193, 301. 

Gunas (Tamas, Rajas, Sattva) 
The, 45, 46, 48, 49, 79, 
85, 124, 182, 302, 342, 

353- 
Hauptmann, 373, 392. 
Hegel, 43, 44, 72, 353. 
Hegesias, 170. 
Hellenism, 61, 143, 146, 150 

156, 252, 261, 266, 310, 

314. 

Heraclitus, 50, 205, 368. 

Herbart, 320. 

Herder, 80. 

Hobbes, 50, 84, 106, 113 116, 
119, 124-126, 132, 133, 
170, 223, 296-298, 347, 
370. 

Holbein, 106. 

Homer, 305. 

Hume, 94, 124, 132-134- *93, 
232, 298, 301. 

Hutcheson, 119, 223, 224, 298, 
366. 

Huysmans, 391. 

Ibsen, 48, 74, 105, 112-114, 116, 
117, 159, 258, 259, 302, 
333. 346, 354, 367, 369, 
373, 392, 398. 

James, St., 249. 

Job, 332. 

Kant, 27, 34, 57, 83, 85, 132, 
154, 156, 158, 168, 169, 
173, 174, 189, 190, 193, 
213, 215-219, 221, 223- 
225, 230, 232, 235, 239- 
243, 256, 257, 279, 282, 
296-298, 300, 301, 306, 
312, 341, 348, 350, 352, 
354, 366, 387, 390. 

Kapila, 44, 46-50, 182. 



Kingdom of God, 64, 196, 210, 

256, 337- 
Krueger, 324, 325, 330. 
Kwang-Tze, 254, 344. 
Laotze, 85, 254. 
Leibnitz, 66, 80, 375. 
Lessing, 149, 306. 
Locke, 190. 
Lotze, 219, 320. 
Mandeville, 132, 133, 199, 223. 
Martineau, 301. 
Marx, 379. 

Megarian School, 215. 
Meinong, 322, 324. 
Mendelssohn, 168. 
Michelet, 46. 
Mill, 95, 103, 104, 119, 120, 

133, 134. 

Millet, 65, 106, 169. 

Montaigne, 153, 158, 268. 

New Testament, The, 63, 64 
67,210,345. 

Nietzsche, 106, 114, 116, 117, 
126, 139, 199, 257, 260, 
298, 299, 304, 360, 369, 
392. 

Nirvana, III, 255. 

Novalis, 155, 158. 

Old Testament, The, 209. 

Parmenides, 57, 215. 

Pascal, 254, 260. 

Paul, St., 345. 

Periander, 192. 

Pericles, 147, 305. 

Petrarch, 305. 

Phidias, 115, 375. 

Plato, 34, 45-50, 57, 61, 62, 71, 
79, 85, 98, 122, 124, 144, 
145, 118, 166, 182, 184, 
196, 243, 290, 295, 298, 
304, 310, 313, 335, 337, 
347, 352, 372, 375- 

Plotinus, 305. 

Pragmatism, 60, 354, 360. 

Price, 189, 190, 225, 298. 

Protagoras, 368. 

Protestantism, 245, 272, 292. 

Proverbs, Book of, 74, 210. 

Puritanism, 211, 274. 



INDEX 



403 



Rabelais, 299. 
Raphael, 75, 295, 372. 
Reischle, 323. 
Rembrandt, 106, 375. t 
Renaissance, The, 147, 150, 

153, 252, 271, 378. 
Romanticism, 195. 
Rousseau, 152, 166, 177. 
Rousseau, Theodore, 146. 
Sankhya, The, 44, 45, 50, 76, 

79, 150, 162, 344, 345. 
Schiller, 47, 48, 49, 73, 76, 87, 

124, 143, 148, 150, 154, 

158, 169, 182, 293, 297, 

305 , 342, 384- 
Schlegel, Friedrich, 155. 
Schleiermacher, 29, 168, 173, 

293, 365- 

Scholasticism, 245, 389. 

Schopenhauer, 53, 57, 65, 72, 
73, 113, 144, 158, 164, 
171, 198, 199, 230, 254, 
255, 257, 278, 279, 290, 
298, 299, 302, 306, 348, 
350, 352, 354. 359, 368, 
370, 391, 398. 

Scotus, 156, 245. 

Semitic, The, 58, 59, 60, 63, 67, 
282, 367, 394. 

Shaftesbury, 50, 124, 192, 193, 
298. 

Shakespeare, 148, 156, 164, 174, 
175, 236, 375. 

Shaw, Bernard, 126. 

Sidgwick, 116, 119, 120, 134, 
135, 193, 301. 

Smith, Adam, 50, 124, 196, 197, 
298. 

Socrates, 26, 85, 151, 185, 213, 
215, 216, 218, 242, 263, 
298, 353, 368, 372, 375- 

Sophists, The, 67. 

Spencer, 50, 101, 121, 123-126, 
170, 292, 298, 349. 



Spinoza, 168, 189, 218, 290, 

298, 393, 396. 
Stendhal, 116, 260, 370, 385 

392. 
Stephen, 101, 122, 123, 186, 

196, 299, 301. 
Stilpo, 192. 

Stirner, 116, 125, 126, 260, 369. 
Stobaeus, 192. 
Stoics, 50, 80, 144, 185, 192, 

196, 203, 263, 292, 294, 

298, 310, 314. 
Strindberg, 392. 
Sudermann, 69, 117, 148, 260, 

261, 392, 398. 
Sulzer, 169. 
Tantalus, 98, 171. 
Tao and Taoism, 30, 74, 85, 

209, 254, 299, 344. 
Tasso, 305. 
Tetens, 80, 168. 
Tolstoi, 126, 148, 257, 391. 
Turgenieff, 117, 126, 259. 
Upanishads, The, 31, 63. 
Valentinus, 46, 47, 182. 
Veda, The, 56, 67, 73, 222. 
Vedanta, 30, 45, 63, 67, 337, 

338, 342, 367- 
Velasquez, 75, 106. 
Vico ; 46-49, 79, 85, 124, 182. 
Vielliers de L'Isle Adam, 116. 
Voltaire, 154, 159, 177, 384, 385. 
Vyasa, 85. 
Wagner, 74, 116, 117, 126, 144, 

175, 258, 259, 369, 373, 

39i, 395, 398. 
Winckelmann, 143, 306. 
Xenophanes, 86. 
Xenophen, 151, 353. 
Yoga, The, 152, 254, 264, 344, 

345- 
Zoroaster, 85. 



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